No NTP sync

[mntnbighker]

I have two different ESXi boxes and I have configured NTP on both. Neither syncs the time despite both claiming NTP is running. I have stopped and restarted the service and tried both IP addresses and host names. According to the firewall the port is opened when the service is running. If I manually set the time grossly outside the current time the vSphere client will show the time in red, but I don't know what that means.

[homerzzz]

What is the output you get when you run this on either host:

watch ntpq -p localhost

[vuzzini]

Hello mntnbighker,

May I know on which version of ESXi your vSphere environment is running on ?

The NTP synchronization issue with ESXi host is fixed in below version of ESXi hosts:

1. VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 1

2. VMware ESXi 5.1 Patch 4

3. VMware ESXi 5.0 Patch 8

Refer KB http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2075424 for more information. Please upgrade your ESXi host accordingly if your current ESXi hosts is running below any of these versions, else upload the syslog.log form the affected ESXi host to this thread.

[mntnbighker]

Every 2s: ntpq -p localhost                                                     2014-11-14 20:20:23

     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter

==============================================================================

*ntp-private.arc 192.150.40.178   2 u   66  128  377    0.293   -3.558   3.155

[mntnbighker]

VMkernel xxx.xxx.xxxx.xxx 5.5.0 #1 SMP Release build-1623387 Feb 21 2014 17:19:17 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[mntnbighker]

2014-11-14T20:23:04Z root: ntpd Starting ntpd

2014-11-14T20:23:04Z watchdog-ntpd: [45503] Begin '/sbin/ntpd ++group=ntpd -g -n -c /etc/ntp.conf -f /etc/ntp.drift', min-uptime = 60, max-quick-failures = 1, max-total-failures = 100, bg_pid_file = ''

2014-11-14T20:23:04Z watchdog-ntpd: Executing '/sbin/ntpd ++group=host/vim/vmvisor/ntpd -g -n -c /etc/ntp.conf -f /etc/ntp.drift'

2014-11-14T20:23:04Z ntpd[45526]: ntpd 4.2.6p2@1.2194-o Tue Jan 21 05:49:29 UTC 2014 (1)

2014-11-14T20:23:04Z ntpd[45526]: proto: precision = 0.862 usec

2014-11-14T20:23:04Z ntpd[45526]: Listen and drop on 0 v4wildcard 0.0.0.0 UDP 123

2014-11-14T20:23:04Z ntpd[45526]: Listen normally on 1 lo0 127.0.0.1 UDP 123

2014-11-14T20:23:04Z ntpd[45526]: Listen normally on 2 vmk0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx UDP 123

[homerzzz]

After you restart the service, does the watch ntpq command still show the big offset and * at the front?

[mntnbighker · Accepted solution]

I switched to "time.nist.gov" because apparently our internal ntp servers won't sync without the version 3 flag. We are supposed to use the NASA servers but I don't want to have to command line edit every ESXi ntp client.