The NTP service on the ESXi host does not start according to the startup policy.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms

• In the vSphere Client, the startup policy is set to “Start and stop with host,” but the NTP service does not start after restarting the ESXi host.
• Automatic startup of ntpd via the “ chkconfig ” command is disabled on the ESXi host.

  chkconfig --list ntpd
  ntpd off

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

There is a discrepancy between the GUI display in the vSphere Client and the startup policy settings within the ESXi host.

Resolution

Update the internal settings of the ESXi host using the following steps :

1. Connect to the ESXi host via SSH as the root user.
2. Change the ntpd startup policy :

   chkconfig ntpd on

3. Check if the ntpd startup policy has been changed, if “ ntpd on ” is displayed, the change has been successful :

   chkconfig --list ntp
   ntpd on

Additional Information

• The following known issues exist in VMware ESXi 7.0.
  NTP service auto start is not working for VMware ESXi 7.0
  
  
• This resolution is applicable to VMware ESXi 7.0 & 8.0.