Installing Network Time Protocol

Installing Network Time Protocol (NTP) is optional but strongly recommended. If you install NTP, install it on each service node in your cloud deployment.

NTP helps ensure a consistent time of day across all of the service nodes in the cloud. If you enable NTP in a network, configure the service nodes to obtain their time over the network.

• If IP multicast is enabled on the IP subnets on which the service nodes reside, you can leverage IP multicast to configure NTP.

• If IP multicast is not enabled on the IP subnets on which the service nodes reside, configure NTP manually.

How to Install and Configure Network Time Protocol

1. Install the NTP package.

   controller# pkg install ntp

2. Install the configuration file.

   controller# cp /etc/inet/ntp.client /etc/inet/ntp.conf

3. Configure NTP.

   Configuration that is necessary depends on whether IP multicast is enabled on the subnets of the node.

   • If IP multicast is enabled, no additional configuration is necessary.
   • IP multicast is not enabled, configure the host names or IP addresses of existing NTP servers:
     1. Comment out the multicastclient option in the /etc/inet/ntp.conf file.

        # multicastclient 224.0.1.1

     2. Uncomment one or more of the server options in the /etc/inet/ntp.conf file:

        server ntp_server_1 iburst
        server ntp_server_2 iburst

4. Enable the NTP server SMF service.

   controller# svcadm enable ntp