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I have a series of internal NTP servers; every other machine on my network is configured to talk to these servers like so:
# ntp.conf for client machines
server 0.ntp.internal iburst
server 1.ntp.internal iburst
server 2.ntp.internal iburst
Meanwhile these internal NTP servers are configured to talk to Amazon's NTP servers like so:
# ntp.conf for the internal NTP servers
server 0.amazon.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 1.amazon.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 2.amazon.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 3.amazon.pool.ntp.org iburst
The problem I've found is that my NTP servers will choose different AWS NTP servers from each other as their authoritative source, and my client machines will also choose different internal NTP servers from each other as their authoritative source, resulting in some clock drift over time. Basically, I'd like the internal NTP servers to be as consistent with each other as possible, so that, by proxy, my client machines will not be too inconsistent with each other.
I've been reading about NTP peering but I'm getting massively mixed messages about what it actually does and whether it will help reduce the clock drift problem. The thing I am seeing most often is that setting a server as a peer will allow ntpd
to treat the peer as a potential time source, but it doesn't make the two servers try to converge their clocks together; however I've seen sources saying to the contrary. I also have seen sources saying that if you peer servers together, you shouldn't let them all have the same list of server
s, which makes no sense to me. I don't know what to think.
So... will adding this section to my internal NTP servers' ntp.conf
help to get their clocks closer to each other?
# adding to ntp.conf for 0.ntp.internal
peer 1.ntp.internal
peer 2.ntp.internal
# adding to ntp.conf for 1.ntp.internal
peer 0.ntp.internal
peer 2.ntp.internal
# adding to ntp.conf for 2.ntp.internal
peer 1.ntp.internal
peer 2.ntp.internal
By the way, I can't peer the client machines as they are transient, so even if peering is the solution, it can only be done with my internal NTP servers.
1Why not just change the internal NTP servers to use a single (the same) time source? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2015-12-16T21:45:27.517
@Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 what if that source becomes unavailable (e.g. the server goes down or a network partition happens?) – 2rs2ts – 2015-12-16T21:53:21.760
IME NTP server addresses named with "pool" usually represent multiple NTP servers (that are sync'd), in case one isn't available... – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2015-12-16T22:13:39.220
@Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 noted... what if I used
prefer
instead anyway? It makes me uneasy just putting one server there. – 2rs2ts – 2015-12-16T22:22:36.763