When using NTP in the guest, disable VMware Tools periodic time synchronization.
To disable VMware Tools periodic time sync, perform one of these options:
- Set
tools.syncTime = "FALSE"in the configuration file (.vmx file) of the virtual machine.
OR
- Deselect Time synchronization between the virtual machine and the host operating system in the VMware Tools toolbox GUI of the guest operating system.
OR
- Run the
vmware-guestd --cmd "vmx.set_option synctime 1 0"command in the guest operating system. To enable time syncing again, use the same command with “0 1″ instead of “1 0″.
For ESX 4.1 and later, use these parameters for Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD:
- To display the current status of the service
vmware-toolbox-cmd timesync status
- Disables periodic time syncronization
vmware-toolbox-cmd timesync disable
Time drifting when running a Linux guest under VMware ESX server
Should you find NTP time is not being reliably synchronized the following steps may be useful:
- Verify that the choosen time souce has given us time and is trusted:
Ensure that when typing:
ntpq -p
that there is an asterisk by the chosen time provider entry.
The virtual machine may need to its APIC and/or ACPI disabled at boot time before loading the OS in addition to these steps.
If an asterisk is not seen using the ntpq -p command APIC could be interferring with time synchronization. This can be disabled by passing the “noapic” parameter at bootup by adding this parameter to the boot switch in /boot/grub/menu.lst.