Synchronising clocks on a number of non-domain windows servers

Hi.

We have a number of webservers, application servers and database servers that we want to keep in sync. Some of these servers are not connected to the Internet so accessing external time sources is not an option.

So, what we'd like to do is configure one server to be the primary time source - it will stay in touch with time.windows.com using the Windows Time service. Which is 'out-of-the-box' default, so fine. We'd then like to configure the other servers to get their time from it.

Should be simple I know, but for some reason we can't get it to work.

Anybody had success doing this?

Mike

From serverfault Mike McClelland

• http://www.articlesbase.com/networks-articles/how-to-configure-windows-server-as-a-ntp-server-108481.html

  This article describes how to make one of your servers a time server and you can then change the TimeServer setting from the windows clock to this server. The key steps are.

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeConfigAnnounceFlags Set the ‘Announce Flags’ registry entry to 5, to indicate a reliable time source.

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeTimeProvidersNTPClientSpecialPollInterval The ‘Special Poll Interval’ registry entry defines the period in seconds that the Windows 2003 machine should poll the NTP server. A recommended value is 900 seconds, which equates to every 15 minutes.

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeParametersNtpServer The ‘NTP Server’ parameter is used to provide a list of IP addresses or DNS names, separated by a space, of NTP servers that the Windows 2003 machine can synchronise to.

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeTimeProvidersNTPServerEnabled Changing the ‘Enabled’ flag to the value 1 enables the NTP Server.

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeParametersType Change the server type to NTP by specifying ‘NTP’ in the ‘Type’ registry entry

  From Robin Day

• I think this is what you're looking for. It describes how to configure the W32Time service to provide NTP service to other clients. Scroll down to the section titled "Configuring the Windows Time service to use an external time source" since you're probably going to sync to another NTP server instead of relying on the server's internal clock.

  From James Sneeringer

• Are these all on a Windows Domain? I think if they are, you can set the source of the PDC emulator, and the rest will stay in sync with that.

  Mike McClelland : Hi Kyle, not on a domain. Yes you are right domain members automatically sync.
  From Kyle Brandt

• You can download NTP software for free, configure you non windows machines to point to this ntp source.

  From Nasa