42. SNTP in Active Directory


  • Simple Network Time Protocol
  • Automatically synchronizes clocks on machines that are members of Active Directory domains
  • Synchronization hierarchy can be defined
  • All times in Windows Server 2003 are stored as Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) and adjusted in the GUI for the time zone
  • Time synchronization is not vital for Active Directory replication (differs from other directory services), but is crucial for Kerberos authentication