I've noticed that our domain controller is supposed to sync with time.nist.gov, but all of our domain machines are running about 2 and a half minutes slow. Meanwhile, an external time tracking service and our personal phones display a slightly later time—only the domain machines seem to be affected. When I manually resync the domain controllers, they show the correct time for a few minutes, but then revert back to being 2 minutes slow. This issue seems to have cropped up in the last couple of days, and I'm unsure whether there's a problem with NIST or something else in my setup. Has anyone else experienced similar time sync issues recently? I've also noticed that after forcing a refresh, the machines became 2 minutes fast, and now they're 5 minutes fast. It seems like the time sync with the VM host is off, as there's no NTP service running on the VM host for the DCs to sync with, which complicates things further.
4 Answers
There was an atomic clock outage in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, but that should be resolved now. Just something to keep in mind as it might have caused some widespread sync issues at the time.
Have you configured your DC correctly for external NTP syncing? You may want to check this guide to ensure everything's set up right: [Configuring DC for Sync with External NTP Server](https://theitbros.com/configuring-dc-for-sync-time-with-external-ntp-server/)
It sounds like you might have VMs set to sync their time from the host. This can create discrepancies. If it's a Hyper-V environment, right-click the VM, go to Settings, then Integration Services, and uncheck the time synchronization service. This way, the VM can pull its time independently without the host interfering. But since you're on VMware, let me know how I can help with that setup!
I checked, and the NTP on the host was already disabled. Still trying to sort this out.
I've seen time sync issues with a few of my domain controllers too. It can be really frustrating! Are you running Hyper-V by chance? If so, try manually syncing the time on your hypervisor; it might push the correct time down to your DCs. I did that for my setup and it resolved the sync problems almost instantly across my organization.
Sadly, I'm still on VMware until I start the migration. Any tips for that?
That crossed my mind too! I'm hoping it's not still affecting any timing.