Syncronizing Active Directory time on Hyper-V

Saturday, 23 April 2011 | 0 Comments | words | minutes | Permalink

When setting up your Microsoft environment using virtual servers running on Hyper-V it is crucial that the clock syncronization service is running in such a way, that your entire datacenter will not suddenly run with the wrong time on its clients, since a part of Kerberos is the need of having syncronized clocks. Thats why Microsoft built Active Directory, such that all client computers (and servers) syncronize from the master server, usually the master DC.But when building your datacenter upon Hyper-V, the time might get desynced, since your Master DC (which should run in a client, not as the server core installation, accourding to Microsoft guides!) will try to sync with the hyper-v Host. This will often lead to having your clock descyncronized with the "real" clock. Microosft KB article #816042 - How to configure an authoritative time server in Windows Server guides the user in on how to make a DC syncronize from a timer server. If this is setup on the Master DC, this will automaticly always have the "correct" time, which will then be automatically syncronized throughout your entire organisation! :)