Some questions on DNS & DHCP on a LAN
 

I'm a bit of a newb to this part of administration...

So I have 20 or so new machines to hook up to my current network of 22 machines. Currently, everything has static ip with a hosts table on each machine for name resolution. For these new machines, I'd prefer to leave them using DHCP & have every other machine be able to see it by looking up it's name only. I'm guessing this requries a local DNS server, correct?

Does the thing that provides the IP also have to be the DNS server? Currently, my router supplies ips to anything that requests DHCP, but I can't have that be the DNS table for my local network (I think), so I need a DNS machine. Should I move the DHCP server to the machine that will eventually be my DNS machine? Should I make the DNS machine be my DNS for everyrhing, or just the LAN? If it's just the LAN, do I set the clients to look at the local DNS server *and* my router for name resolution, or do they all make the requests from my DNS server which then makes a request to the router?

Feel free to point me towards a good resource for this info if you don't feel like typing out a full answer. ;)

So I have 20 or so new machines to hook up to my current network of 22 machines. Currently, everything has static ip with a hosts table on each machine for name resolution. For these new machines, I'd prefer to leave them using DHCP & have every other machine be able to see it by looking up it's name only. I'm guessing this requries a local DNS server, correct?
YES

Does the thing<computer?> that provides the IP also have to be the DNS server?
No, you can have the DHCP server and DNS server as separate machines, but you can put them together to save some cash.

Should I move the DHCP server to the machine that will eventually be my DNS machine?
Since I don't know what type of router your using, I'd say yes, move the DHCP to the new computer that is going to be the DNS server.

Should I make the DNS machine be my DNS for everyrhing, or just the LAN?
Depends on what you are doing. For simplicity, use a local DNS server for the LAN and if your website is being hosted, let them take care of the DNS for web/ftp traffic to the website.

If it's just the LAN, do I set the clients to look at the local DNS server *and* my router for name resolution, or do they all make the requests from my DNS server which then makes a request to the router? The router have nothing to do with name resolution, so your client machines aren't going to be requesting anything from it. Routers only play traffic copy and pass packets based on the ARP table (IP/MAC addresses).

<edit> I'm two posts away from 1000 :D < /edit>

ISC dhcpd and Bind 9 can be paired together to do some really cool things. For instance, you can have dhcpd hand out IP addresses and update bind using its ddns updates mechanism. However, configuring both of those can be monolithic.

Dnsmasq, on the other hand, supports assigning IP addresses and running as a forwarding nameserver; it also serves hostnames from /etc/hosts. This is a nice alternative to having hosts on every single machine. You would still need to keep the static IPs, in this case.

If you're interested in how to do the first, know that it's a lot of work. Plus, Bind 9 is a memory PIG. However, if you still want to, reply away.

Thanks for the advice, guys.