Flexible single master operation or operations master

Strange, I work regularly with these roles, but after being asked the other day what they stood for, I had no idea.

Lets start by taking a look at what FSMO roles you have, install the Support Tools from the \Support\Tools folder on your product CD and type netdom query fsmo at a command prompt and you should get something like this.

By Default, all the FSMO roles will be installed on the first domain controller in your forest.  When you install the first DC of any other domain in your forest, that DC will hold all three domain FSMO roles (PDC Emulator, RID Master, and Infrastructure Master).

1. Forest Roles

• Schema Master – As name suggests, the changes that are made while creation of any object in AD or changes in attributes will be made by single domain controller and then it will be replicated to another domain controllers that are present in your environment. There is no corruption of AD schema if all the domain controllers try to make changes. This is one of the very important roles in FSMO roles infrastructure.
• Domain Naming Master – This role is not used very often, only when you add/remove any domain controllers. This role ensures that there is a unique name of domain controllers in environment.

2. Domain Roles

• Infrastructure Master – This role checks domain for changes to any objects. If any changes are found then it will replicate to another domain controller.
• RID Master – This role is responsible for making sure each security principle has a different identifier.
• PDC emulator – This role is responsible for Account policies such as client password changes and time synchronization in the domain