Virtualizing: Microsoft® Tier 1 Applications with VMware vSphere™ 4

Active Directory Time Synchronization

A large part of a successful Active Directory implementation is the proper planning of time services. In a virtualized environment, virtual machines that don’t require CPU cycles don’t get CPU cycles. For the typical Windows application in a virtual machine, this is not a problem. When virtualizing Microsoft’s Active Directory, however, these idle cycles can cause significant time drift for domain controllers. Active Directory is critically dependent on accurate timekeeping, and one of the most important challenges you will need to address is how to prevent clock drift.

Kerberos v5

Microsoft uses Kerberos v5 as the authentication protocol, and time synchronization is critical to the proper functioning of ...