Date and Time Issues on ESX Hosts

[SPANOZZO]

I work for a large company with roughly 2,400 esx hosts around the country.  We are running esx 4.0.

I am having an issue with date and time on a number of esx hosts.   I need a way to query the hardware clock on the hosts.   This is due to the fact that when the esx host reboots, the software clock checks in with the system's hardware clock.   If it is wrong, the software clock then will update to the incorrectly set hardware clock.   The system's guests will then check into the soft clock when they reboot and be wrong causing my customer numerous headaches.

Any help would be appreciated.

Spazzman

[leejm_ca]

Hey Spazzman...curious...do you configure your ESX Servers to replicate their time with any of your company NTP servers ? 

[SPANOZZO]

Yes.  We want to change the hardware clock to the universal time.   We have two time servers that we synch our clocks to.  

Btw... I figured out how to pull the time using "Plink." 

The time is skewed on a number of boxes.  After we reboot the boxes, the time synchs up fine with our time servers.   And no, stopping and starting the services doesn't help.

Spazzman