I'm working with an Entra DS managed domain that's set up in the US East region, but I've noticed that the default time zone is UTC. All the servers connected to this domain are syncing to this UTC time, which isn't convenient since I need it to be in EST. Since this is a managed domain without direct access to change domain controllers, I'm wondering how I can adjust the time zone for my Entra managed domain. Any ideas?
3 Answers
Keep in mind that the time for domains is usually based on NTP, which is set to UTC. A common practice is to simply set the time zone on each server individually. This is typically fine and shouldn't affect domain trust. If your servers are in different time zones, it’s standard to adjust each to its local time.
It sounds like what you need isn’t directly in the Entra DS. You should create a policy in Intune to set the specific time zone you want. Azure’s managed infrastructure often defaults to UTC for consistency. Check out this guide for how to set up the policy and apply it to your devices: [guide link]. You can even filter the policy for specific locations or IPs if you’re managing multiple regions.
If you're dealing with Microsoft Entra Domain Services, there are indeed domain controllers available. You can connect to them if you have a Virtual Machine (VM) that has network access to the domain. Just install the Active Directory Management tools on that VM, and use an account that’s part of the AAD DC Administrators group to manage it. However, changing the time zone of the domain itself might not be possible.
I have a VM with the AD DS tools and can manage users, but I still can’t change the domain time zone. My understanding is that all FSMO roles are managed through Azure's infrastructure, so there’s no PDC emulator to make those changes.