Time server

Soldato
Joined
7 Jun 2003
Posts
16,147
Location
Gloucestershire
Never had to do this before and the configuration that exists in my environment was created before i came along, and as usual is undocumented, so excuse the potentially stupid questions :p

Moved my FSMO roles to a new DC today along with a bunch of other roles, last thing left to move is the time server settings, however I'm confused because it appears to all be setup differently to how i understood it to be setup (AKA how i was told by the person who originally set this up years ago)

I was told that one server was the time server. That server synced with an outside time source and all servers and clients on the network got their time from that one source. However, when checking the registry settings for that server the "Type" is set to "NT5DS" along with the other DC, so am i right in thinking that isn't using an outside time source at all?

What's the recommended method to use? NTP to say uk.pool.ntp.org, or to stay on NT5DS and use the internal clock? And is there anything special i need to do in order for my network to recognise the new FSMO role holder as the time server and ignore the previous?

Also will clients always look to the authoritive time server as their time source, or will they just use the first DC they pickup and all the DCs act as time servers? (I ask because the new one had NtpServer, Enabled = 1 by default)

Currently i've got my new DC set to NTP, to the server mentioned above, with ,0x1 on the end, specialpollinterval set to 900, and announceflags set to 5. All of this i've done without actually understand what is best practice though and simply going by what a technet page recommended.

EDIT: the information i followed is the second half of this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/816042 is that ok, or should i look to change anything in particular?
 
Last edited:
Thanks rotor, everything appears to be working ok.

RefID on all 3 DCs (of which two will soon be demoted and removed) is pointing to my PDC emulator, and the PDC emulator RefID is pointing to an external address. My office PC is pointing to a DC for it's time too.

Only ever replace DCs once every 5 years or so (or more in some cases) so every time i do this it's a case of racking my brain to remember everything.....now to go through the whole network pointing all my switches and printers to the new DNS + NTP sources :p No doubt i'll miss something, a nice chance to do some documentation though i suppose.
 
A few general comments:

- I've found Evernote to be the perfect thing to store this kind of info. Notes as you go along, that come in handy in the future (that's exactly where I copy/pasted the w32tm command from).

- It has been a very long time since I did an AD upgrade where I changed the IP addresses. It's just too much hassle. You can change everything including the names, just not the IPs. Too many things like switches/routers/appliances/anything-not-DHCP to run around and re-configure.

- Use DNS for NTP, not IPs, that way you can fail over if needed (e.g. ntp1.domain.local).

Thank you for the tips :) Nice to learn some new best practices, especially regarding that NTP tip, so simple yet i overlooked it.

I wasn't sure about the IP change side of things, i'll do it that way in the future, think i've pretty much finished on that front now though :D
 
Back
Top Bottom