Virtualizing NTP servers

AndyDodsworth — Thu, 18 May 2017 20:17:06 GMT

We're looking into virtualizing our NTP servers and I was wondering if anyone has gone through this process?

There's not much out there in terms of documentation around this (from what I can see - or can't see ).

Looking for pros, cons, caveats, etc - ideally pertaining to a vSphere 6.0 environment (VCSA, external PSC, ESXi hosts).

Cheers

Andy

Re: Virtualizing NTP servers

PCTechStream — Thu, 18 May 2017 21:43:00 GMT

An opinion!

Ok! Unfortunately NTP and virtualisation does not go very well together. clients are ok in most cases, however NTP server generally won't work reliably on virtual server. NTP servers should always be on physical hosts. You should have at least 3 of them peering in a pool.

EXAMPLE:

For example, if a physical machine loses 12 seconds every 30 days, NTP can compensate for that and does so very well. But if that machine can lose anywhere from 4 to 70 seconds every 30 days, NTP isn't so good at tracking that level of change.

If you absolutely had to use VMs for this, I'd set up no less than three such NTP servers. Each of those needs to be on a different host, and if possible in a different data-center. They need different time-sources and should peer with each other. Then configure all of your NTP clients to use all three as Parent sources.

Raul.

VMware VDI Administrator.

http://ITCloudStream.com/

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Virtualizing NTP servers

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