VMware ESXi 5.5 cannot synchronize time with Windows NTP Server

The author needs to face the environment for time synchronization has a higher requirement, and the virtualized environment time is more prone to problems, you can refer to the previous blog post Why is the synchronization on the domain controller very important? The author of the environment, after personal observation, if there is no time synchronization, virtual machine and standard time gap in just two hours unexpectedly on the deviation of nearly half an hour!

According to VMware KB 1003063, ESXi 5.5 only needs to be properly provisioned with NTP client in Vcenter's vsphere.

Note: For ESX 3.5 and above, NTP can is configured from VSphere Client and no longer requires manual configuratio N.

However, this is not true.

Problem description

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First introduce the author's environment:

• A physical machine with Windows 2012 installed, which is not a domain Controller.
• Three ESXi 5.5.
• A Windows R2 virtual machine with vcenter 5.5 installed, running on one of the above ESXi.

Following the steps of document configuring Windows Time service to using an internal hardware clock, I configured the Windows 2012 physical machine to be an NTP server that uses an internal hardware clock. Note that Microsoft's article how to configure authoritative time servers in Windows server is not work.

Follow the steps in VMware KB 1003736 to configure three ESXi 5.5 to synchronize time with the Windows physical machine NTP server.

Results:

Time for NTP server

The time of a single ESXi

Knowledgeable you will say that only UTC time on ESXi, the time you see in vcenter vsphere is convert. I would add that the time zone of the machine where my vsphere resides is already set to the same time zone as the NTP server, and the times are the same.

The conclusion is that this ESXi NTP has a problem and time is not synchronized.

Troubleshoot problems

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First, we need to verify whether our NTP server is good.

So I picked out a virtual machine installed on one of the ESXi. Note that, by default, as long as VMware Tools is installed, even if you do not turn on TimeSync for VMware Tools, the virtual machine will, in some cases, and its host go to sync time, as described configure times synchronization Between Guest and Host Operating Systems.

The time of this esxi virtual machine is wrong, because ESXi time is wrong. –_-| |

The author runs the following command to make this virtual machine time correct.

net start w32tm

W32tm/config/manualpeerlist:10.110.69.124/syncfromflags:manual/reliable:yes/update

W32tm/resync/rediscover

As a result, we demonstrate that NTP server is working properly. I have set the time of NTP server to a few minutes from standard time, so we can avoid confusion.

Next, I tried all the things in vsphere that the interface could manipulate, and I didn't make NTP client work properly.

I follow the article troubleshooting NTP on ESX and ESXi 4.x/5.x (1005092) to troubleshoot, no results. Until, the author found this article.

Detailed steps do not introduce, we can see for themselves, I only briefly say:

1. Add a line of TOS Maxdist 30 on the last line of/etc/ntp.conf.

2. Modify the/etc/likewise/lsassd.conf file, uncomment the #sync-system-time, and explicitly set sync-system-time = yes

3. Restart the LSASSD service and the NTPD service.

Troubled the author for several days of the problem finally solved!

Resources

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Configuring Windows Time service to use an internal hardware clock

Http://www.denningelectronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/TimeService.pdf

VMware ESXi 5.1 won't sync time with Windows R2 NTP Domain Controller

http://www.virtxpert.com/vmware-esxi-5-1-will-not-sync-time-with-windows-2008-r2-ntp-domain-controller/

Configuring the Windows Time Service

http://blogs.msmvps.com/acefekay/2014/04/26/configuring-the-windows-time-service/

Verifying time synchronization across an ESX/ESXI host environment (1003736)

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003736

Troubleshooting NTP on ESX and ESXi 4.x/5.x (1005092)

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005092

W32tm

Http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w32tm.aspx