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 <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/30/12, Grant Ridder <shortdudey123@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