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AlbertWT
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Joining the ESXi server to the AD domain advantage ?

Hi,

What are the advantage of joining the ESXi 5.1 U1 hosts to the Windows Active Directory domain ?

is it for the NTP synchronization purpose ?

I'm in the process of migrating the NTP role from the old WIn2k3 box into one of the WIn2008R2 VM so I just wondering if this is the case.

Thanks.

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Alistar
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Hello,

NTP is one of the benefits of Domain Authenticated machine. The other benefits are Domain-Wide authentication (you can login as a user with elevated privileges if you are the member of preset "ESX Admins" Domain Group, but this name can be dynamically changed) and also VMware Update Manager relies on DNS resolution - without a reverse lookup you won't be able to update your hosts.

Stop by my blog if you'd like :slightly_smiling_face: I dabble in vSphere troubleshooting, PowerCLI scripting and NetApp storage - and I share my journeys at http://vmxp.wordpress.com/

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Alistar
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Hello,

NTP is one of the benefits of Domain Authenticated machine. The other benefits are Domain-Wide authentication (you can login as a user with elevated privileges if you are the member of preset "ESX Admins" Domain Group, but this name can be dynamically changed) and also VMware Update Manager relies on DNS resolution - without a reverse lookup you won't be able to update your hosts.

Stop by my blog if you'd like :slightly_smiling_face: I dabble in vSphere troubleshooting, PowerCLI scripting and NetApp storage - and I share my journeys at http://vmxp.wordpress.com/
AlbertWT
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Ah ok, so in this case when I joined or set the ESXi server to be joined with the AD, does it adjust the time from the ESXi NTP setting or it adjusted itself by the Windows PDC emulator role ?

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mjha
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I believe you have to set the IP address of your domain controller as NTP server in Esxi host settings.

Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you think your query have been answered correctly. Manish Jha | Operations Support Engineer | vCloud Air Operations vExpert 2015-17 | vExpert-NSX | vExpert-Cloud | VCAP6-DCV | VCP6-DCV | RHCE-7 Website : http://vstellar.com