Mastering Active Directory

Primary domain controller emulator operations master

The PDC operations master role is a domain-wide setting, which means each domain in the forest will have a PDC operations master role holder. One of the common Active Directory interview questions is this: what FSMO role is responsible for time synchronization? The answer is PDC! In an Active Directory environment, it allows a maximum of five minute time difference (time skew) by default. If it's more than 5 minutes, devices will not be able to add to the domain, users will not be able to authenticate, and the Active Directory-integrated application will start throwing authentication-related errors.

It is important that domain controllers, computers, and servers in the Active Directory ...