One or more clocks in a vIDM cluster show a warning in the System Diagnostics Dashboard

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• When attempting to validate vIDM cluster health on the vIDM Administrator Portal > Dashboards > System Diagnostics Dashboard : Flags a yellow warning alert on the Clocks pane. 
       
• Clocks fails to show data or show a significant lag time and a yellow warning status. 
        
• Host time is configured for all nodes rather than an NTP server. 
        

Environment

• VMware Identity Manager 3.3.x

Cause

• This issue can be caused if "Periodic updates for time sync" is disabled for one or more nodes in the VMware Tools settings for the affected Virtual Machines. 
• If "Periodic updates for time sync" is disabled then VMware Tools only syncs time at power on, resume from snapshot or vMotion so time drift will be expected. 

Resolution

• In the vSphere UI Right-click on the vIDM Virtual Machine instance(s), select Edit Settings > VM Options tab > expand VMware Tools and check the Time Synchronization settings. 
• If "Periodic updates for time sync" is disabled, enable it by checking the box and SAVE the configuration.