Specify Exclusion Range in DHCP in Windows Server 2008

While working with DHCP server and its scopes many times administrators may not want DHCP server to assign a single address or range of IP addresses to the client computers when they request. The reason might be that those IP addresses are manually assigned to any computer which might be playing an important role in the network for example file server. When this is the case administrators need to exclude that particular IP address or the range from getting distributed to the clients. As a Windows server 2008 DHCP server administrator if you want to specify exclusion range in the DHCP server you need to follow the steps given as below:

1.       Logon to Windows server 2008 computer with administrator account and ensure that DHCP server role is installed on it.

2.       Click on Start menu and in the search box type DHCP.

3.       Press enter key to open DHCP snap-in.

4.       From the left pane expand the name of the server and then expand IPv4 tree.

5.       Expand the scope for which you want to specify exclusion range and right click on Address Pool to get the menu.

6.       From the available options click on New Exclusion Range and in the Add Exclusion box specify the start and end IP addresses from the range that you want to exclude. (If you want to exclude only one IP address type it in both start and end text boxes).

7.       Once done click on Ok button to save the changes.