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JKwb
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-22-2017 08:35 AM

ESXI 6.5 host Time & Date Utilizing NTP Off By 5 Hours

Good Morning. I have some new ESXI hosts I am configuring and for whatever reason am having a difficult time wrapping my mind around resolving time on these things. I have them both utilizing external NTP servers, however the zone is specified as UTC, which I understand is just how it is and is unmodifiable. However, this is causing my hosts to have the incorrect time, five hours ahead of 15:34 for example instead of the actual time of 10:34. How do I properly resolve this so the hosts are accurate per our timezone/location? Thank you.

4 Replies
cyberfed2727
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎03-22-2017 12:45 PM

The change will have to be done at the NTP server. Since your hosts are getting time from the NTP it will take on whatever values the NTP server provides. ESXi/vCenter only supports UTC time, and if your NTP is only providing UTC time then that's what you are stuck with unfortunately.

You could use a Windows box as an NTP server with the appropriate time zone and use that as your time source.

JKwb
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-22-2017 12:53 PM

Thank you for the response cyberfed. What's interesting to me is this. My vCenter appliance (which is a chicken-in-an-egg scenario) running on one of the hosts actually references the same NTP servers, but shows the correct time. Attaching a photo for reference. vCenter on the left, ESXI on the right.

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cyberfed2727
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎03-22-2017 01:14 PM

Not really sure honestly. I haven't used the vCenter appliance much. I noticed conflicting documentation from VMware. Some say VCSA can be set to a timezone and other docs say its set to UTC and not modifiable.

So I guess I'll ask did you set a timezone on the vCenter appliance? Is that possible even?  I'll be curious to the solution. Best of luck.

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JKwb
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-22-2017 01:23 PM

No problem. Appreciate the responses. So this is where it gets even more interesting. The times in the above attachment are actually the same host. Just one shown via the vCenter appliance, and the other via ESXi. However when I drop to shell over an SSH connection to the vCenter appliance and issue a date command, it shows the (incorrect) UTC time stamp. So to recap:

- Time displayed when direct to host > displayed incorrectly, not correct time

- Time display when in vCenter to same host > correct

- Time when displayed when in vCenter shell > displayed incorrectly, not correct time

I'm sure there's some answer(s) out there, just not sure on this yet.

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