Fat and thin client coexistence

[Andi]

We currently have WDS server for deploying images to our fat clients, and thinstation for running our thin clients.

 

DHCP is all one big scope, so limited to one set of options. Options 66 & 67 are set to point to the thinstation TFTP, however since setting that up my fat clients now boot to the thinstation when I try and rebuild them.

 

Is there anyway I can separate the two?

[powdarrmonkey]

AFAIK you can do this with DHCP user classes/vendor classes. You specify what class a machine belongs to in Windows, and on the DHCP server configure the options for that class.

 

Never tried it myself though, but I am doing shortly so I'll let you know how it goes.

[Andi]

Never heard of that. I'll do a bit of research.

[powdarrmonkey]

From http://blogs.msdn.com/anto_rocks/archive/2005/02/25/380231.aspx :

 

"User classes are fundamentally different. User class enables partitioning the client machines into distinct classes that can receive different options values based on their user class."

[Geoff]

It's a pita to do on a windows DHCP server. Your much better off (once you're used to it) using ISC DHCPd.

[Andi]

Presumably my best course of action would be to separate the two on different subnets anyway? That's something that's a hot topic here at the moment, but is not a simple move and nobody in-house knows exactly how to do it.

[Geoff]

router + VLANs.

[Andi]

Yeah that's exactly what I'm intending to get setup here to lower the broadcast traffic and generally just neaten things up.

[Andi]

OK, seeing as changing our entire networks IP structure is quite a massive job it's not something I can even contemplate at the moment.

 

Just a thought, in the meantime would it be possible to setup a second scope on my existing DHCP server (windows server 2003) and reserve IPs for the thin clients, giving them the thinstation options, and the fat clients (remaining on the existing scope) having the WDS options?

[Andi]

I take it that's a no then?

[Geoff]

You would have to setup a user/vendor class. Which I could never get to work properly on windows dhcp.

[Andi]

Ok, thanks Geoff.