FSMO Role - Domain Wide Role

jbaello

The book says that the 3 roles of Domain Wide Role can only be operated by one single DC in a Forest, but when I was doing my lab I was actually able to seize transfer one of this 3 roles to different DC across my forest.

I transferred Infrastructure, RID, and PDC to different BDC across my forest almost scattered all over the place and was able to and still works.

This contradicts what the book says, I need explanation!

Thanks in advance!!!

royal

You can scatter the domain-wide roles however you please. If you have an environment that has 9x clients, put the PDC near those clients as the 9x clients will use the PDC for a lot of their operations such as password changes. If you install the directory service client on those 9x clients, they can begin to use any of the DCs.

Edit: Just found this. A good doc on FSMO placement recommendations:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223346

jbaello

Thanks Royal, this is very helpful!!!

dynamik

For the exam, pay particular attention to the information on infrastructure master role and global catalogs as well as PDC and legacy OSes. Most other important FSMO activities involve transfer and seizing.

donald7862003

it seems like these questions would be on 70-294 isnt that the test for AD

donald7862003

Do yo have to setup these roles "FSMO" I mean i can see having a PDC Emulator for bacwards compatibility (NT4) but do you really need a schema,rid and infrastructure master?

Mishra

donald7862003 wrote:

Do yo have to setup these roles "FSMO" I mean i can see having a PDC Emulator for bacwards compatibility (NT4) but do you really need a schema,rid and infrastructure master?

You want to set the servers with the best hi-availability and redundancy possible. In small companies, when people first start building their domain they usually put it on 1 crappy desktop or something. In 3 years the company could have grown to 300 employees and you need to move those roles off that server to the nice shiny Dell 2950 you just bought. You wouldn't be able to do this if those roles were not interchangeable.

sprkymrk

donald7862003 wrote:

Do yo have to setup these roles "FSMO" I mean i can see having a PDC Emulator for bacwards compatibility (NT4) but do you really need a schema,rid and infrastructure master?

Yes, for an AD 2000/3 domain all those rolls are necessary and automatic. Don't let the names confuse you, each one also has additional responsibilities not reflected in the name. For instance, the PDC emulator is also the default Time Server for the domain.

donald7862003

OK that makes sense thank you