Hi,
We have a couple on Servers runnings as guests on VM Ware ESX 3.2, and lately we have been having Time Keeping issues with these guest servers.
An history on the same, Initially we were running behind time, by loosing seconds to minutes and to even days, on reading the article on Time Keeping, we have made changes to the kernel parameters as follows.
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (2.6.9-42.ELsmp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-42.ELsmp ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet clocksource=pit nosmp noapic nolapic
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-42.ELsmp.img
The next change was addition of "tools.syncTime=True" in the .vmx configuration. and we also instaled VM Ware tools.
However, the issue has changed from running behind time to being ahead of time. The servers are now running ahead of time, by atleast 15 minutes.
Details of the guest servers:
Kernel: 2.6.9-42.ELsmp
#cat /etc/issue
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 4)
Kernel \r on an \m
cat /proc/interrupts
CPU0
0: 374589732 XT-PIC timer
1: 54 XT-PIC i8042
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
8: 27 XT-PIC rtc
9: 281263 XT-PIC acpi, ioc0
10: 2740185 XT-PIC vmxnet ether
11: 6610319 XT-PIC vmxnet ether
12: 82 XT-PIC i8042
14: 3548853 XT-PIC ide0
NMI: 0
LOC: 0
ERR: 0
MIS: 0
date
Thu Oct 16 11:05:25 EDT 2008
hwclock
Thu 16 Oct 2008 10:50:47 AM EDT -0.049382 seconds
Logs on NTP
Oct 16 10:33:29 server1v ntpd[2152]: synchronized to 192.168.1.1, stratum 1
Oct 16 10:18:27 server1v ntpd[2152]: time reset -901.722435 s
Oct 16 10:37:49 server1v ntpd[2152]: synchronized to 192.168.1.1, stratum 1
Oct 16 10:34:46 server1v ntpd[2152]: time reset -901.485647 s
Oct 16 10:55:08 server12v ntpd[2152]: synchronized to 192.168.1.1, stratum 1
We have an NTP server to which all our servers sync their time with, these vmware guest servers do sync as well, but there is a time reset which takes the time ahead, as shown in the date and hwclock.
Please let me know if there is any other information that you would require.
Kind Regards,
Lakshman