NTP Monitoring in ESXi

[paradox]

Hi all,

I have a host (4i) that is not keeping time correctly. I want to verity how its operating in relation to its time source. e.g. ntpq -p

Can this be done? I have attempted with vMA but I am not having much luck. I don't want to use the 'unsupported' approach on the console.

Cheers

Dan

Message was edited by: paradox. Had the command wrong 😕

[DSTAVERT]

Make sure you have ESXi pointed to one or more reliable time servers.

http://pool.ntp.org and choose from you area of the world. Restart the ntp service from the Client /Configuration screen

[paradox]

I lost track of this one. The correct NTP settings were set. I just wanted an idea of how I could check on the convergence of the Host to the time source.

i.e. see if it was catching up or there was some other issue occurring. As it happens it did converge later so this one slipped my mind.

[J1mbo]

I think I read somewhere that the NTP client uses an initial sync period of 1 week, and then automatically adjusts this based on how much skew has occured since last sync. Why it can't just have an update period box like everything else I don't know!

Please award points to any useful answer.

[DSTAVERT]

The unsupported console is perfectly acceptable. It just isn't supported. The ntpd daemon is actually a standalone daemon unlike many others that are busybox links. It does have a real life /etc/ntpd.conf file and takes many configuration options.

[paradox]

Sure I understand what you are saying but I need to steer away from unsupported operations for my customers. I would hate to drop into unsupported mode and to have a customer have support declined because I used this console to check on something.

In reality I don't know what VMware's stance on this is, the warning is pretty clear thou.

Dan

[DSTAVERT]

You wouldn't be declined support. There are many things that can only be done from the console. Here is a knowledgebase article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003677

How about this KB article that describes how to enable ssh password-less login to ESXi even though ssh isn't supported either. http://kb.vmware.com/1010287