vSphere ESXi 7.0 U3 and later versions configuration files for NTP and PTP can no longer be edited

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

As part of the bigger goal of moving away from using stickybit files, VMware have moved the configuration stored in these files to ConfigStore. These files are used just as cache files by the services, the configurations in these files are now stored in the ConfigStore. The ConfigStore is the single source of truth in ESXi 7.0 Update 3 and later.

Symptoms:

The ESXi configuration files /etc/ntp.conf and /etc/ptp.conf can no longer be edited directly.
It is no longer possible to make changes to NTP, PTP by editing these config files directly. From ESXi 7.0 Update 3, files under /etc are read-only and edits do not persist across reboot.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.3

Resolution

Use the following esxcli commands to configure NTP, PTP on ESXi. The commands have been modified to read/write to configstore instead of interacting with a stickybit file.

To display current configuration:

• # esxcli system ntp get
• #  esxcli system ptp get

To change configuration:

• # esxcli system ntp set
• # esxcli system ptp set