Updating NTP settings on vSAN cluster using Quickstart, Skyline health shows warning as Not Compliant

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Updating NTP settings on VMware vSAN Server cluster using Quickstart, Skyline health shows warning as Not Compliant
• If NTP Server is added after vSAN Cluster is created using Quickstart then Skyline Health will show a warning
• This warning is seen in Skyline health - Hyperconverged Cluster configuration compliance.
• The vpxd.log shows similar entries as below

2021-02-19T10:00:33.706-05:00 info vpxd[04629] [Originator@6876 sub=vpxLro opID=44583133] [VpxLRO] -- BEGIN task-79063 -- domain-c4003 -- vim.ClusterComputeResource.validateHCIConfiguration -- 521301e6-####-####-####-########c5e(526f06e0-####-####-####-########a4f)
2021-02-19T10:00:33.706-05:00 error vpxd[54813] [Originator@6876 sub=MoCluster opID=41263c3e-4f] NTP servers on host host-1023 does not match. Desired:<obj xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="urn:vim25" versionId="7.0.1.1" xsi:type="ArrayOfString"><string xsi:type="xsd:string"><ntp server 1></string><string xsi:type="xsd:string"><ntp server 1></string></obj>, Found: <obj xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="urn:vim25" versionId="7.0.1.1" xsi:type="ArrayOfString"><string xsi:type="xsd:string">0.xx.pool.ntp.org</string><string xsi:type="xsd:string">1.xx.pool.ntp.orgr</string><string xsi:type="xsd:string">2.xx.pool.ntp.org</string><string xsi:type="xsd:string">3.xx.pool.ntp.org</string></obj>

• Running the following database query shows the original NTP servers

   select datetime_config from vpx_hci_config_info;
        
Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x

Cause

Modifying the NTP config on the hosts in the cluster post HCI configuration, NTP configuration persisted in VCDB. When the vsan-health or any API client asks for validation, this config is used as a reference to validate host settings.

Resolution

The issue is resolved in vCenter Server 7.0 Update 3 (build number 18700403)

Workaround:
To work around this issue, apply any of the below workaround.

• This alarm is harmless so you can potentially acknowledge and ignore it since NTP server is same across all hosts.
• Take a snapshot of VC before executing the below steps

For the clusters that have their NTP Configs changed post configuration
UPDATE VPX_HCI_CONFIG_INFO 
WHERE cluster_id = ?   <-- note that this is a number, a cluster_id of cluster domain-c4003 is 4003.
SET datetime_config=NULL;

Cluster_id can be obtained by clicking the Cluster Name in VC Inventory.