Applies To
- Zenoss Control Center (all versions)
Summary
Control Center hosts require a common time source. All Control Center hosts should be synchronized with the same NTP server. If internet access isn’t available, follow the instructions in the Control Center Installation Guide for Configuring a private master NTP server.
In distributed environments, a best practice we have in the ZaaS (Zenoss as a Service) Operations team is to synch all the Control Center hosts be they local delegate or remote delegate hosts with the Control Center Master to ensure time sync between all Control Center hosts.
One caveat to take into consideration is if you are leveraging virtualization like VMware or Hyper-V and your VMs are set to synchronize their time with the hypervisor host. You would not want this setting set for a VM that contains a Control Center host and would need to turn that off. The location of the settings may vary based on which version of ESX or Hyper-V you are running but some informative articles on the subject are below:
VMware:
http://www.mustbegeek.com/time-synchronization-between-virtual-machine-and-esxi-server/
Hyper-V:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/chrad/2009/08/28/fighting-hyper-v-physical-host-time-drift-utilizing-ntp-to-synchronize-clocks/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/virtual_pc_guy/2010/11/19/time-synchronization-in-hyper-v/