Time servers?

[BJG]

What do people do about time servers in a modern agile network these days? On-prem DC? Internet time server? Local clock?

[FragglePete]

We use SWGfL/RM NTP servers for sync'ing our DCs, etc - mainly because they block most of the well known others. We do however, have a Bodet Tanoy system on site as this has a time server element built in with a GPS antenna attached which Multicasts time details as needed.

 

Pete

[Michael]

One on prem DC communicating with pool.ntp.org

 

GPO pointing workstations to on prem DC.

[pete]

Similar to @Michael.

 

Network hardware/appliance-ish things get a time.ourdomain.whatever CNAME that points to a couple of DCs and uk.pool.ntp.org if they support DNS names in config files*.

 

*some network hardware will do a nslookup if given a DNS name and then put the returned IP in the config. But not tell you this.

Edited April 8, 2024 by pete
typo

[Norphy]

In a previous job, we had Galleon time servers, synced from GPS. They were very good. I wanted one for the last MAT I worked for but could never get the budget.

[Aprice]

pool.ntp.org for most sites, I did install a Mikrotik at one site a while back with a GPS receiver that was setup as a time source for one of the DCs, that worked quite nicely.

[Olliedawg]

ESXi hosts using NTP pointing to 0.uk.pool.ntp.org / 1.uk.pool.ntp.org

 

All VM's will get time from host via VMware tools

 

Workstations on domain have login script to copy time from the main DC

 

worked with no issue for years

[dmj]

Workstations on domain have login script to copy time from the main DC

 

Left over from the win98SE days?

Windows has had an NTP client since at least XP

[Olliedawg]

Left over from the win98SE days?

Windows has had an NTP client since at least XP

 

Probably, its one thing that i've never changed. Just changed IP address the .bat points to whenever I changed the main DC. It works so i've left it lol