NTP service is stopped after VMware Aria Operations upgrade

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

After upgrading VMware Aria Operations

• There is a time difference across nodes in the VMware Aria Operations cluster
• The ntpd service is down on one or mode nodes

Note: Run the systemctl status ntpd command on a node to get the status of the NTPD service

Example:
#systemctl status ntpd
ntpd.service - Network Time Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ntpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: inactive (dead) since Tue 2023-08-01 11:33:24 UTC; 1s ago
Docs: man:ntpd
Process: 862 ExecStart=/usr/bin/ntpd -g -u ntp:ntp (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 874 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Environment

VMware vRealize Operations 8.6.x
VMware Aria Operations 8.12.x
VMware vRealize Operations 8.10.x

Resolution

To resolve the issue, disable the systemd-timesyncd service and start the ntpd service

Complete the following on all Analytics nodes (Primary, Replica (if present), and Data nodes) simultaneously

1. Log into the Analytics node as root via SSH or Console
2. Run the following command to stop and disable the systemd-timesyncd service

systemctl stop systemd-timesyncd && systemctl disable systemd-timesyncd

3. Run the following command to start the ntpd service

systemctl start ntpd

4. Run the following command and cross reference between nodes to verify that the times are now synced across nodes

date

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
Failure to resolve this issue can lead to time drift between cluster nodes, which can cause failures in product upgrader and bringing the cluster online, among other issues