SBS 2008 Physical And Hyper-V – Set Up the Domain Time Structure

One of the things we discovered in our SBS Hyper-V based cluster deployment was the VM’s ability to time themselves all over the place.

In fact, the way we discovered the problem was through a total collapse of the just built production cluster.

SBS 2008 was installed and configured, the Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 OSs were installed and configured, and all of our validation tests were run successfully.

We had the cluster online and were working on setting up the additional servers when things just stopped.

It turns out that time.windows.com is _not_ a reliable time source for one and the other is we needed to run a series of w32tm commands on each member of the domain in order for things to run properly.

On SBS 2008 or the PDCe:

• w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:pool.ntp.org /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes
• w32tm /config /update
• net stop w32time && net start w32time
• w32tm /resync /rediscover

Once the above commands have been run on SBS or the PDC, it may take a bit before the settings settle into place.

The following command will tell us what the time service is up to as far as where the machine is getting its time from:

• w32tm /query /source

On any other DCs the following needs to be run:

• w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier /reliable:no
• w32tm /config /update
• net stop w32time && net start w32time
• w32tm /resync /rediscover

On any member servers:

• w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier
• w32tm /config /update
• net stop w32time && net start w32time
• w32tm /resync /rediscover

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer