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infuseweb
Contributor
Contributor

Time between ESX hosts is off

I've had this problem for a while (pre VI 3.5) and can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone. I now have 3 ESX 3.5 hosts. They are all configured identically to use NTP according to VMware's KB article on configuring NTP on ESX hosts. So they're all using the same NTP source. They're all set to the same time zone (GMT). Yet two servers are 30 seconds off, the third is over 1 1/2 minutes off. They should all be within a second or two of each other and I thought NTP was supposed to check every 5 minutes or something to update the clock. Doesn't appear to be happening. This naturally can cause problems with proper logging, database entry times, and such between VM's on different hosts.

Anyone have any idea how to ensure time between all three hosts stays within a second or two at most of each other?

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MattG
Expert
Expert

Could they be configured via the config files and the VC GUI?

I am not sure when NTP was added as an option in VC, but before that NTP was configured via the config files.

-MattG

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infuseweb
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Thanks. The settings were originally configured via the config files. This was before they introduced the ability to update things in the GUI. But nothing was ever changed in the GUI and it seems to have inherited the config settings so I'm not sure that's it.

However, I did notice after having to apply the wonderful 3.5 Update 2 patch the other day that the NTP service Failed and was unable to sync time after a reboot. I'm not sure why that would be as the ports show open. That could be the problem with the one server being more off than the others, but that still doesn't explain the other time differences.

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