Two DHCP server in the same subnet

So I change jobs recently and in this new workplace I've found that we've actually got two DHCP servers. In the very same subnet, and they both have the same scope. I did not set up this but I see there are a lot of IP address conflicts, which must be because they aren't connected to one another in any way. So, this is probably the reason right?

I did however see that there are settings in the DHCP console which is called "Server connection bindings" and there are IP adresses that can be entered there. The IP entered is however the same IP address of itself, the same as 127.0.0.1. I don't know if they should point to one another though.

Now, the way I see it, only one DHCP is needed. OR, we could split the scopes. But I'm not really sure if that's necessary at all really. I mean, we only have a couple of hundred computers in the domain, as well as a bunch of iPhones and other smart phones.

So, am I way off here or should one of them be disabled? Or should I split the scopes?

Solution 1:

There's no problem with having 2 DHCP servers. In fact, it gives you some redundancy in case one of them goes down. It just needs to be setup correctly. Make sure they both have a different range of addresses to hand out and the same reservations created on each.

Of course, if you don't need or want the redundancy and uptime, then just turn one of them off. That's probably the easiest thing to do.

Solution 2:

The obvious and wrong answer is:

"If they are on the same network segment, you should only have one."

You can have multiple DHCP servers (e.g. for redundancy) so long as the ranges don't overlap, but I've never done it myself. There probably also exists DHCP software that can be set up in a failover configuration, so that only one is active at a time.