The white paper that MS published clearly states that "certain applications may require more accurate time sync, and users are encouraged to implement 3rd-party (s)NTP Solutions".
I've got an Oracle RAC cluster. The machines have been congifured to sync time with AD, but it is not accurate or reliable enough. Because records may be added to the database by diffent database servers and different application servers it means that it is possible for records written by one node to have timestamps earlier than records which have already been written by another node.
To a certain extent the failure is in the application which should use a more reasonable granularity for the time - there is no way to guarantee that the nodes will have identical times unless one of them is working as a "time master" and all the other nodes use it for all time related references. The servers are always going to be a slightly adrift, even if it is just a couple of 1000ths of a second.
At the moment the servers are a couple of seconds out, which is enough to cause problems. I want to implement a dedicated solid state stratum 1 server in the UK, either syncing with GPS or MSF.
Unfortunately because of office politics there will probably be resistance to using a time source other than AD.
Do you have a link to the whitepaper or a title that I can search on? Documentation evidence from MS that recommends using alternative time sources when increased accuracy or synchronisation is required will smooth the process.
