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DHCP failover in terms of a failover cluster was not introduced until 2012 so that is not an options for you with 2008<br />
what you can do is split the scope between the servers which is a fairly common practice; some do an 80/20 split meaning 80% of the scope on one server and 20% on the other though you can configure the split based on your needs<br />
<br />
for example, if you are using a 192.168.1.0/24 network, you can have one server serve addresses with a scope having a range of 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.180 while the other server has a scope of 192.168.1.181 - 192.168.1.254<br />
<br />
if one server goes down, any client that needs to renew a lease will simply get a different address from the other server
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DHCP failover in terms of a failover cluster was not introduced until 2012 so that is not an options for you with 2008
what you can do is split the scope between the servers which is a fairly common practice; some do an 80/20 split meaning 80% of the scope on one server and 20% on the other though you can configure the split based on your needs

for example, if you are using a 192.168.1.0/24 network, you can have one server serve addresses with a scope having a range of 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.180 while the other server has a scope of 192.168.1.181 - 192.168.1.254

if one server goes down, any client that needs to renew a lease will simply get a different address from the other server

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We have 2 windows 2008 servers running AD. Is there a way to have them both run DHCP so in case one should fail, the other one will pick up DHCP?<br />
<br />
Thanks.
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We have 2 windows 2008 servers running AD. Is there a way to have them both run DHCP so in case one should fail, the other one will pick up DHCP?

Thanks.

DHCP failover

Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, based on the Microsoft Vista codebase, is the last 32-bit server operating system released by Microsoft. It has a number of versions, including including Foundation, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web, HPC Server, Itanium and Storage; new features included server core installation and Hyper-V.

Windows Server 2008

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is an auto configuration protocol used on IP networks and an extension of the Bootstrap Protocol. DHCP allows for computers to be configured automatically to communicate with each other over an IP network without the need for manual setup by a network administrator. The implementation of DHCP relies on a DHCP server to hand out network configuration information to DHCP-capable clients that request an IP address (and other information required or useful in communicating with other devices on an IP network). In addition to an IP address, common configuration information served over DHCP includes a default gateway, subnet mask and DNS sever(s).