NTP servers are marked as unreachable

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

NTP servers used by ESXI hosts show as unreachable when running the following command on the ESXI hosts: ntpq -c associations

Checking /var/run/log/syslog.log the following logging is present:

2026-00-00T00:00:00.000Z ntpd[xxxxxxxx]: unable to bind to wildcard address 0.0.0.0 - another process may be running - EXITING
2026-00-00T00:00:00.000Z ntpd[xxxxxxxx]: daemon child exited with code 1

Environment

ESXI 8.x

Cause

Verify if another ntpd process is running on the ESXI host:

ps -v | grep ntpd

Resolution

Restart the ntpd service on the host:

/etc/init.d/ntpd restart

Confirm the NTP servers are now reachable.