Many folks have more than just windows desktop PCs syncing their time. If your application requires sub-5 second accuracy, (such as end of a banking day), then Windows NTP is unsuitable for the purpose.
If your only objective is to sync the times on a bunch of user laptops so they can get Kerbeos tickets within the 5 minute tolerance, it works fine. For me, even a few seconds apart can be frustrating for comparing log files between busy devices. Your reason would be whether or not you fall inside or outside the Microsoft guidelines below: >From Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939322 We do not guarantee and we do not support the accuracy of the W32Time service between nodes on a network. The W32Time service is not a full-featured NTP solution that meets time-sensitive application needs. The W32Time service is primarily designed to do the following: - Make the Kerberos version 5 authentication protocol work. - Provide loose sync time for client computers. The W32Time service cannot reliably maintain sync time to the range of 1 to 2 seconds. Such tolerances are outside the design specification of the W32Time service. On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 5:23 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysi...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 6/30/12, Grant Ridder <shortdudey...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I don't understand why anyone would use windows server for anything that > > needed precision like time. > > Probably because they realize that in a Windows domain, their domain > controllers already provide a SNTP service with the Windows NT PDC > Emulator providing authoritative time for windows time service, and > all those windows servers can be enabled as a NTP server with a small > configuration change, and Windows Domain clients are required to > be synchronized with this using the Windows time service, as a > condition for Kerberos authentication and domain logon, for the > configuration to be a supported one. > > So, given you already have those capabilities and those constraints... > how do you justify deploying another server for providing a separate > time service, running a new OS, instead of just using the same one > for all hosts? > > In many cases it's not "Why use a windows time server" that has to > be justified; > the burden of proof is to answer the question "What can you say that > indicates you should definitely not use a windows time server for the > application?" :) > > -- > -JH > >