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neil1997Flag for United States of America

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Servers that have been set to Static IP are reconfiguring the ip to the 169.0.0.0 range after reboot

We have a Citrix Xen server from Dell that is the host for two Windows 2008 servers. When we bring the Windows Servers up using DHCP the servers get an IP address in the 10.0.0.0 range (which is correct), but as you can imagine; we want our servers to be static! Here is when we get into trouble. When we set the NIC to use a static IP in the 10.0.0.0 range everything resets and all is well. That is until it gets rebooted; then we get an IP of the 169.0.0.0.0 range when it returns.

I understand that the 169 is the address range that is the windows Automatic Private Address range, but why would it be assigning that when it has been assigned an IP of the 10.0.0.0 range?

Any thoughts?
What other info do you need to help us? Thanks a ton Experts!
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astrochimp
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Could it be that they're reverting to an earlier snapshot?
It might also be that the static IP you are assigning is in the DHCP range.  Make sure that it is not.
Don't suppose you've updated the NIC drivers? If not, do it and make sure it's the drivers from Dell's website.

If it's not either of the previous, changing the default APIPA address to the one you need may be a workaround.
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Sorry, it has taken so long for me to get back to this.

astrochimp: everything is new. There haven't been any snapshots made

nick2253: It is not in the DHCP range

renazonse: we will try the NIC driver updates

More info:
I have noticed that both machines have a number after the "local area connection" adapter like "local area connection 7" The other administrator that set these up says he doesn't know why those are there. It behaves as if the adapters are being recreated on each bootup.
It is not doing that after all. A reboot didn't increment the number. It was a thought.
the local area connection 7 might be from having 7 adapters on the xen server and all were assigned to the server at the begining. We changed that and then just mapped one to that vm. Which would have been called 7. The others were probably just deleted after that by the other administrator.
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nick2253
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Actually, are the virtual machines clones of one another? If so, they may have the same virtual mac address causing the cards to freak out.
We thought of that workaround too, but our DHCP is done by our router and that is a feature that it doesn't have.

The servers aren't clones; both were fresh installs. I have verified that the MAC addresses are not the same.

Thanks guy's you are giving us great things to check! I feel like a solution is close.
Are the 169.0.0.0 IP addresses set as the static IP in TCP/IP properties after reboot?  Or is it that the desired static IP is still set in TCP/IP properties, but the network adapter gets the 169.0.0.0 IP?

Oh, one idea just popped into my head:  do the servers have the IPv6 protocol installed?  A conflict between the IPv6 and IPv4 may cause the problem.  Try uninstalling the IPv6 if it is installed.  You'd see it in the properties of the network adapter if it were installed.

Cheers,
Nick
Yes it is the adapter only. The tcp/ip properties still have the proper ip settings. For the adapter: ipv6 is listed, but we unchecked the box next to it, since we knew we wouldn't use it. Is unchecking that box what you mean by uninstalling ipv6? Or is there somewhere else to actually remove it?
Unchecking the box should be sufficient, however you can always uninstall it with the uninstall button just below the listing.  A last ditch idea might be to uncheck/uninstall the QoS Packet Scheduler as I  have had problems with it, but those were problems related to wireless internet access.

Hopefully another expert has some advice because I'm getting stumped!

Good luck,
Nick
What about this workaround:

Write a batch file that does the following:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

and set it to start on boot up.

Good Luck,
Nick
Your comment about MAC addresses and virtual adapters led us to remove old NICs by setting device manager to show nonpresent devices and uninstalling all the adapters listed. Even the current one. Once the NIC was reinstalled on reboot, I set the IP and rebooted again. All is well. Thanks a bunch for leading us in the right direction.