Managing Active Directory Roles and Features

Creating domain controllers is fun, but leveraging all of them is key to implementing a responsive and highly-available Active Directory. Therefore, we'll focus on the differences between domain controllers in terms of Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) roles and global catalog configuration. There's a reason why the following quote, inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm, is popular among Active Directory admins:

"All domain controllers are equal, but some domain controllers are more equal than others."

The following recipes will be covered in this chapter:

Querying FSMO role placement
Transferring FSMO roles
Seizing FSMO roles
Configuring the Primary Domain Controller emulator to synchronize time with a reliable source
Managing time synchronization for virtual domain controllers
Managing global catalogs

Before we begin with the recipes, we will look at FSMO roles and practices.