NTP health for SDDC Manager is RED when two NTP servers are configured during Bring-up

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• You see that the NTP health for SDDC Manager is RED when running /opt/vmware/sddc-support/sos --ntp-health.
• Two NTP servers were configured during Bring-up.
• You see two IP addresses on a single server line in the /etc/ntp.conf file on the SDDC Manager VM, similar to the following:

tinker panic 0
restrict default kod nomodify notrap nopeer noquery
restrict 127.0.0.1
restrict -6 ::1
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/drift/ntp.drift
server 10.113.60.176,192.168.16.1

Note: The preceding excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

• You see output similar to the following when running ntpq -pn on the SDDC Manager VM:

No association ID's returned

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 3.0.x
VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5.x

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting VMware Cloud Foundation 3.x. There is currently no resolution.

Workaround:
Use the following steps to workaround this issue:

1. Log in to the SDDC Manager VM as the vcf user and switch to the root user by issuing the su - commaond.
2. Issue the following command to make a copy of the /etc/ntp.conf file:

cp /etc/ntp.conf /var/tmp/ntp.conf.bak

3. Open the /etc/ntp.conf file in a text editor.
4. Remove the server line with two IP addresses on it.
5. Create two separate server lines, each with one of the NTP server IP addresses on it.
6. Save and close the file.

 

Note: The /etc/ntp.conf file should look similar to the following:

 

tinker panic 0
restrict default kod nomodify notrap nopeer noquery
restrict 127.0.0.1
restrict -6 ::1
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/drift/ntp.drift
server 10.113.60.176
server 192.168.16.1

7. Issue the following command to restart the ntpd service:

systemctl restart ntpd

Additional Information

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