Configuring and enabling the Virtual DHCP Server with VBScript

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Under Virtual Server it is possible to configure a virtual DHCP server on any virtual network.  This is handy if you are running virtual machines in a private environment and do not want to have a dedicated DHCP server.  As with everything else under Virtual Server - this can be configured with VBScript:

 Option Explicit

  

 dim vs, vn1

  

 'Connect to Virtual Server

  

 Set vs = CreateObject("VirtualServer.Application")

  

 set vn1 = vs.VirtualNetworks.item(1)

  

 vn1.DHCPVirtualNetworkServer.ConfigureDHCPServer _

          "10.10.0.0", _

          "255.255.0.0", _

          "10.10.0.16", _

          "10.10.255.254", _

          "10.10.0.1"

  

 vn1.DHCPVirtualNetworkServer.ConfigureDHCPLeaseTimes 129600, 64800, 97200

  

 vn1.DHCPVirtualNetworkServer.DefaultGatewayAddress = "10.10.0.2"

 vn1.DHCPVirtualNetworkServer.DNSServers = "10.10.0.2"

 vn1.DHCPVirtualNetworkServer.WINSServers = "10.10.0.2"

 vn1.DHCPVirtualNetworkServer.IsEnabled = true

This script configures and enables the DHCP server on the first virtual network on a server.  Some of the calls here are fairly obvious (DefaultGatewayAddress, DNSServers, WINSServers, etc...) but some are a bit more cryptic.  The three parameters for ConfigureDHCPLeaseTimes are the lease time, lease renewal time and lease rebinding time (all specified in seconds).  The ConfigureDHCPServer call takes parameters of the network address to be used, the subnet mask, the starting IP address for the DHCP server to offer, the ending IP address for the DHCP server to offer and the IP address to be used by the DHCP server.

A couple of key 'gotchas' to be aware of here are that the DHCP server IP address must be below the DHCP range specified.  Also the starting address for the DHCP IP range must be above the first 16 addresses of the network.

Cheers,
Ben