What are the FSMO Roles?
I will talk more about the specific functions of the FSMO roles in the next article in this series. I do however want to quickly mention what these roles are. As you may recall, I mentioned that there are three domain specific roles, and two forest specific roles.
The domain specific roles include the Relative identifier, the Primary Domain Controller Emulator, and the Infrastructure Master. Forest level roles include the Schema Master and the Domain Naming master. Below is a brief description of what these roles do:
Schema Master: maintains the authoritative copy of the Active Directory database schema.
Domain Naming Master: maintains the list of domains within the forest.
Relative Identifier Master: responsible for ensuring that every Active Directory object at a domain receives a unique security identifier.
Primary Domain Controller Emulator: acts as the Primary Domain Controller in domains containing domain controllers running Windows NT.
Infrastructure Master: the Infrastructure Master is responsible for updating an object’s security identifier and distinguished name in a cross domain object reference.
