- Introducing Operations Masters
- Planning for Business Continuity of Operations Master Roles
- Recommendations for Operations Masters
- Planning a Strategy for Placing Global Catalog Servers
- Need to Know More?
Recommendations for Operations Masters
Losing an operations master does not generally have an immediate impact on your network and its users. The exception to this rule is the PDC Emulator used by down-level clients and for password changes. If the PDC Emulator goes down, you may have to seize the role fairly quickly. Protect the server playing this role as best you can.
Always transfer an operations master role rather than seize it. Only seize a role when it is unavoidable. Make sure you have a process in place that prevents the old operations master from coming back online.
Consider network traffic when deciding which servers on your network should perform each role. For instance, the PDC Emulator is contacted by all down-level clients and by each DC when a password change takes place. This can cause a lot of traffic on an enterprise network. The PDC Emulator should be in a location that allows other servers to have easy access to it. The Infrastructure Master may or may not be dependent on the Global Catalog server, depending on what functional level the domain is running in. Make sure there is a Global Catalog server in the same site as the Infrastructure Master.
It's a good idea to combine the Schema Master and Domain Naming Master roles. These roles are suited to being on the same server because these tasks are usually performed by the same group within an organization.