How to make Windows Server 2016 PDC use external time source such as time.windows.com

Question

With windows server 2016 is it possible to synchronize the primary domain controller with an external ntp source such as time.windows.com? If so please enlighten me. When a server is not joined to the domain there is an "Internet Time" tab on the Date and Time applet, but that tab is missing once the server is joined to the domain.

I can manually set the time on the PDC and that time will flow out to domain members, so maybe that is good enough. I'm not sure. My idea is to hook up my PDC to time.windows.com to get the right time and then according to docs.microsoft.com it appears that the rest of the domain will eventually sync. But I cannot figure out how to modify my PDC server to use an external ntp server as it's source.

Another caveat to my setup is that I don't own or control the hardware, it is in a virtualized setup with a small cloud provider running on OpenStack. Not sure if that is relevant or not.

Solution

I don't think it has changed in Server 2016.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/816042/how-to-configure-an-authoritative-time-server-in-windows-server

Although, if it's a cloud hosted virtual machine there is a good chance your operating system's clock is synced with the host's clock, and your hosting provider should already be keeping that synced with a reliable time source. But, you might have to contact them about how they handle that.