Both are Active Directory schema attributes which specifies the date and time of when an AD object was created. Both attributes return the same values, but the actual value is stored in whenCreated attribute alone, because createTimeStamp is a constructed attribute and it reads the data from whenCreated attribute.
WhenCreated attribute was implemented first, and to be complaint with LDAP standards the createTimeStamp was added later on as constructed attribute, the data is really stored only once in the Active Directory database.
Both attributes are replicated to all DC’s, the createTimeStamp should not be replicated to the Global Catalog server since the isMemberOfPartialAttributeSet property of the attribute is not TRUE. However, you can also get a value from the GC.
Sources
– whenCreated vs createTimeStamp
– Active directory attributes – createTimeStamp & whenCreated
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