Mastering Active Directory - Second Edition

Primary domain controller emulator operations master

The primary domain controller (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 most common Active Directory-related interview questions is: which FSMO role is responsible for time synchronization? The answer is PDC! In an Active Directory environment, it allows a maximum of a 5-minute time difference (time skew) between server and client to maintain successful authentication. If it's more than 5 minutes, devices will not be able to be added to the domain, users will not be able to authenticate, and the Active Directory-integrated application will start throwing authentication-related errors. ...