Cannot connect to NTP server

[vit-support]

Hi.

A couple of weeks ago we bought vSphere 8 Essentials, and I configured vCenter and two ESXi hosts in a cluster. There's two or three things I can't seem to figure out, but here's the first one:

Sync to NTP:

I tried going to vCenter Server Management -> Time -> Edit chose NTP and put in the NTP-servers from ntp.org:

Unable to save settings. Check internet connection and server status. Failed to perform operation on NTP daemon.

The error indicates there something wrong with the NTP daemon, but I checked the firewall just in case; found nothing wrong, but tried using an internal NTP server on the same subnet instead. Same result.

I then tried from one of the host:

Service analysis started on host: VIT-VM12
Test started at: 2023-11-27T07:27:08Z
Time Service is administratively enabled.
Verifying NTP service.
NTP server: 10.70.1.20 resolves IPv4: 10.70.1.20
Virtual NIC vmk0 : Admin: Up
IP Interface: vmk0 IPv4 Address: STATIC 10.10.1.112
IP Interface: vmk0 connected to Management Network on vSwitch0
IP Network Stack: defaultTcpipStack
Physical NIC vmnic2 : Admin: Up Oper: Up
Physical NIC vmnic3 : Admin: Up Oper: Up
Firewall Rule: ntpClient allows traffic on port: 123
ntpd is running, PID: 3425436
Kernel clock type: ntp
NTP is not synced
NTP never was synchronized.
Service analysis completed.

Lastly i SSH'd into the vCenter and run net.set --servers <IP-adress> but that only returned:

Error in method: Failed to perform operation on NTP daemon. (code com.vmware.applmgmt.err_ntp_operation_failed)

Any help would be much obliged.

 

Kind regards,

Espen.

[dstadelmann]

 

Do you have the same issue on the hosts or only for the vCenter NTP? Which build version do you run on the vCenter appliance?

Regards

Daniel

[Kinnison]

Hello,

Let's try to do simple things, SSH to one of your host / vcenter object and then issue the classic ntpq -pn command, the result can already say a lot. On the internet you can find many guides that explain how to interpret the result, you can also post it here and maybe we can try to give you some help.

Regards,
Ferdinando