Tick Tock VMware / NTP / VCF Deployment issues

So I’ve seen a few issues with NTP lately and figure it’s time for a good revisit, before trying to update your environment, or just for a good health check NTP servers and make sure they are in sync and nice and happy.
Use Photon 4 as that has NTP and is easier.

To not this is for monitoring and checking – to setup NTP if you’re using DC’s check out this post here on setting up time sync for dcs!!

let’s add in our ntp servers to check

vi /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf

log in via ssh, or console if you don’t have dhcp

install ntp – tdnf install ntp

Make sure it’s not stuck on .INIT. or has a far reach or offset.

root@ [ ~ ]# ntpq -p
     remote      refid           st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
 xx.xx.x.xxx     .INIT.          16 u   46   64    0    0.000   +0.000   0.000
 xx.xx.x.xxx     .INIT.          16 u   45   64    0    0.000   +0.000   0.000

A Reach value of 1 means only the first poll has succeeded. Normally, after a few minutes, you should see the reach register increase:

1 -> 3 -> 7 -> 17 -> 37 -> 77 -> 177 -> 377

When synchronization succeeds, one of the servers will change to:

  • ^* = selected synchronization source
  • ^+ = additional good source(s)

You can see all these are in good standing.

watch -n 5 ‘chronyc sources -v’

is what we did for this, here you can see the ntp servers you’re using and how they are responding. Once it’s good you can rerun the vCenter / Virtual ESX server and double check and your ntpq -p will be in sync now!

root@photon-machine [ ~ ]# chronyc tracking
Reference ID : 00000000 ()
Stratum : 0
Ref time (UTC) : Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970
System time : 0.000000000 seconds fast of NTP time
Last offset : +0.000000000 seconds
RMS offset : 0.000000000 seconds
Frequency : 66.169 ppm slow
Residual freq : +0.000 ppm
Skew : 0.000 ppm
Root delay : 1.000000000 seconds
Root dispersion : 1.000000000 seconds
Update interval : 0.0 seconds
Leap status : Not synchronised
root@photon-machine [ ~ ]# chronyc sources -v

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