Configure SLES server as an internal time source...?

Hi Guys,

We are using SLES 11 Sp2 servers.

Scenario:
Time sync for all our production servers.
We want do not want all our servers to be pointed to an Internet time source, since most the servers are going to sit behind a firewall.

We would like to create an internal time source, where in that one server would take time from ntp pool servers and will act as a master time source for the rest of the servers in our Prod environment.

I went through the documentation for SuSE, but, it talks about configuring a server to take time form an external time source, but does not talk about itself acting as a time source for other servers in the environment.

Is this a possible scenario?
Any pointers or ideas?

-ddgaikwad

Hi ddgaikwad,

[QUOTE=ddgaikwad;22300]Hi Guys,

We are using SLES 11 Sp2 servers.

Scenario:
Time sync for all our production servers.
We want do not want all our servers to be pointed to an Internet time source, since most the servers are going to sit behind a firewall.

We would like to create an internal time source, where in that one server would take time from ntp pool servers and will act as a master time source for the rest of the servers in our Prod environment.

I went through the documentation for SuSE, but, it talks about configuring a server to take time form an external time source, but does not talk about itself acting as a time source for other servers in the environment.

Is this a possible scenario?
Any pointers or ideas?[/QUOTE]

any system running ntpd can be used as a timesource. So if you followed the docs to set up ntpd as a client, you should be able to point your other servers to that internal server and be set.

If you have enough servers, I’d go and run two servers as NTP heads, to avoid a SPOF (single point of failure).

Regards,
Jens

@jmozden is right

And here’s a more detailed answer, with examples:

Say you want to have two internal NTP servers: ntp1.yourdomain.com and ntp2.yourdomain.com
These servers should synchronize to a country pool in /etc/ntp.conf:
Example, for Germany:
run this command, as root: [FONT=Courier New]yast2 ntp-client add server=de.pool.ntp.org[/FONT]

On your clients, add those two servers:
[FONT=Courier New]yast2 ntp-client add server=ntp1.yourdomain.com
yast2 ntp-client add server=ntp2.yourdomain.com[/FONT]

Two more very useful options, in /etc/sysconfig/ntp
[FONT=Courier New]NTPD_FORCE_SYNC_ON_STARTUP=“yes”
NTPD_FORCE_SYNC_HWCLOCK_ON_STARTUP=“yes”[/FONT]
They make sure the clock is synchronized at boot-time no matter how far off it is, compared to the NTP server.

Don’t forget to start and enable the service on all servers:
[FONT=Courier New]rcntp start
chkconfig --add ntp
[/FONT]