Active Directory use Flexible Single-Master (FSMO) roles in the domain and
forest.
Certain domain and enterprise-wide operations not well suited to
multi-master placement reside on a single domain controller in the domain or
forest. The advantage of single-master operation is to prevent the
introduction of conflicts while an operation master is offline, rather than
introducing potential conflicts and having to resolve them later. Having a
single-operation master means, however, that the FSMO role owner must be
available when dependent activities in the domain or enterprise take place,
or to make directory changes associated with that role.
The Active Directory defines five FSMO roles: schema master, domain master,
RID master, PDC emulator, and infrastructure. The schema master and domain
naming master are per-forest roles. The remaining three, RID master, PDC
emulator, and infrastructure master, are per-domain roles.
A forest with one domain has five roles. Every additional domain in the
forest adds three domain-wide roles. The number of FSMO roles in a forest
and potential FSMO role owners can be determined using the formula ((Number
of domains * 3)+2).
A forest with three domains (A.com, with child and grandchild domains of
B.A.com and C.B.A.com) has eleven FSMO roles:
1 Schema master - forest-wide A.COM
1 Domain naming master - forest-wide A.COM
3 PDC emulators (A.com, B.A.com, and C.B.A.com)
3 RID masters (A.com, B.A.com, and C.B.A.com)
3 Infrastructure masters for each respective domain. (A.com, B.A.com, and
C.B.A.com)
When you create the first Windows 2000 domain controller of a forest, the
system assigns all five roles to it. When you create the first Windows 2000
domain controller of a new domain in an existing forest, the system assigns
all three domain roles to it. In a mixed mode domain containing both Windows
2000 and Windows NT 4.0 domain controllers, only the Windows 2000 domain
controllers can hold any of the domain or forest wide FSMO rolls.
--
Regards,
Christoffer Andersson
No email replies please - reply in the newsgroup
If the information was help full, you can let me know at:
http://www.itsystem.se/employers.asp?ID=1