OPERATIONAL DEFECT DATABASE
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In the vCenter Server Appliance Virtual Appliance Management Interface (VAMI), you cannot configure an NTP server unless the NTP server replies to ICMP traffic (ping).The "Edit Time Synchronization Settings" wizard displays, "<SERVER>, and <SERVER> are unreachable"If trying to configure "time.windows.com" and "time.nist.gov" as NTP servers, the applmgmt.log reports messages similar to: /var/log/vmware/applmgmt/applmgmt.log2018-11-07T00:03:08.843 [3001]DEBUG:vmware.appliance.timesync.impl:com.vmware.appliance.ntp.test(['time.windows.com', 'time.nist.gov'])2018-11-07T00:03:08.843 [3001]DEBUG:vmware.appliance.networking.testUtils:Testing connection to: ['time.windows.com', 'time.nist.gov']2018-11-07T00:03:10.993 [3001]DEBUG:vmware.appliance.networking.testUtils:ping out: b'PING time.microsoft.akadns.net (51.141.32.51) 56(84) bytes of data.\n\n--- time.microsoft.akadns.net ping statistics ---\n10 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 1871ms\n\n', err: b'', returncode: 12018-11-07T00:03:11.100 [3001]DEBUG:vmware.appliance.networking.testUtils:ping out: b'PING ntp1.glb.nist.gov (129.6.15.28) 56(84) bytes of data.\n\n--- ntp1.glb.nist.gov ping statistics ---\n10 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 1872ms\n\n', err: b'', returncode: 12018-11-07T00:03:11.101 [3001]DEBUG:root:TestRunStatuses: servers=['time.windows.com', 'time.nist.gov'] statuses=['SERVER_UNREACHABLE', 'SERVER_UNREACHABLE'] messages=[Structure('LocalizableMessage', dict(defaultMessage='Failed to reach server.', id='com.vmware.appliance.ping.failure', args=[])), Structure('LocalizableMessage', dict(defaultMessage='Failed to reach server.', id='com.vmware.appliance.ping.failure', args=[]))]
The vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 GA and 6.7 U1 use ICMP to validate the NTP servers that have been configured.
This issue is resolved in VMware vCenter Server 6.7 Update 2, available at VMware Downloads.
If your desired NTP servers do not respond to ICMP / ping, you can configure this using the command line. Log into the Appliance Shell as rootRun the following command to set the desired NTP servers com.vmware.appliance.ntp.set --servers SERVER1,SERVER2 Run the following command to validate these NTP servers com.vmware.appliance.ntp.get To validate NTP is running and view the offset/jitter, start by switching to the bash shell shell Start NTP service ntpd start Query NTP ntpq -p Optionally, configure NTP to start automatically upon boot systemctl enable ntpd.service
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