VMware ESXi 6.7: Configuring NTP Client from CLI

Summary

This post contains notes for configuring NTP on ESXi 6.7.

Configuring NTP Client

SSH to the ESXi server using ssh and open the /etc/ntp.conf file using the vi command.

vi /etc/ntp.conf

Add the local NTP server with the server option and the IP address of the server at the bottom of the /etc/ntp.conf.

server 192.168.0.50

The full file output should look like this. One thing to note is that multiple server entries can be added to the configuration file.

restrict default nomodify notrap nopeer noquery
restrict 127.0.0.1
driftfile /etc/ntp.drift
server 192.168.0.50

Restart The ntpd Service

Need to restart the ntp daemon service on the server. This can be done using the init.d script. Executing it with the restart option will do this. This can also be done using the WebUI.

/etc/init.d/ntpd restart

Below is the desired output of the NTP daemon restarting.

Stopping ntpd
Starting ntpd

Testing

Query the NTP peers to make sure everything looks good. This can be done using the following command.

ntpq -p

If it lists the NTP server(s) in the list of NTP peers and the time looks correct. Everything should be good to go.

      remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
===============================================================================
*slab-inf-01.lab* 38.229.62.9      3 u   65   64  377    0.388   -2.941   0.087

Conclusion

This post contains notes for configuring the NTP client on an ESXi host using the ntp.conf file. This also shows how to restart the ntpd service. Along with checking/verifying the NTP server connectivity.