How do you find out the instantaneous load of the DHCP server?

Many network administrators would like to know the instantaneous load on their DHCP servers. This is possible on Windows Server 2003. The downside is that this cannot be done directly via the GUI or the net shell commands.

You can go to the perfmon by typing perfmon on the run window, click add counters (Ctrl-I) and then select the performance object as DHCP server. Once you have done this, you will see a list of counters exported by the DHCP server service. Choose the counter titled “Packets Received/sec”. Packets Received/sec is the rate at which packets are received by the DHCP server. This should give a good picture of how stressed your DHCP server is. The cool thing about this is that the display is a graph which vividly describes the stress on the server. One more cool thing about this is that this operation is perfectly remotable. This means that you can monitor the stress of your DHCP server while sitting on your desktop. You can try this out for the different counters which are exported. The complete list and thier semantics is given here: https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/standard/proddocs/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/standard/proddocs/en-us/sag_dhcp_add_perfmonreference.asp

The problem with netsh or the MMC snap-in is that they give you the raw cummulative data. e.g. The total number of packets received. This data though useful is not of much relevance to the admin.