NTP service is very important for troubleshooting, vmkernel log timestamp is incorrect if your NTP service is not running and ESXi system time is wrong. It can also impact to VM system time even you disable time synchronization on VMware Tools since VM still need to sync time with ESXi after awake from suspended status, finish vMotion, or revert from snapshot.
I know it’s simple to configure NTP services on single how, what if you want to configure NTP service on massed hosts?
Basically we have 3 steps to make sure NTP service working properly:
- Configure NTP server IP address.
- Bring up NTP service.
- Set services startup along with ESXi system.
Let’s try PowerCLI:
Get-VMHOST -Location Cluster Name | Add-VMHostNtpServer -NtpServer “NTP server address“
Get-VMHOST -Location Cluster Name | Get-VMHostService| Where-Object {$_.key -eq “ntpd”} | Start-VMHostService
Get-VMHOST -Location Cluster Name | Get-VMHostService| Where-Object {$_.key -eq “ntpd”} | Set-VMHostService –Policy On