We have a number of webservers, application servers and database servers that we want to keep in sync. Some of these servers are not connected to the Internet so accessing external time sources is not an option.
So, what we'd like to do is configure one server to be the primary time source – it will stay in touch with time.windows.com using the Windows Time service. Which is 'out-of-the-box' default, so fine. We'd then like to configure the other servers to get their time from it.
Should be simple I know, but for some reason we can't get it to work.
Anybody had success doing this?
Mike
Best Answer
http://www.articlesbase.com/networks-articles/how-to-configure-windows-server-as-a-ntp-server-108481.html
This article describes how to make one of your servers a time server and you can then change the TimeServer setting from the windows clock to this server. The key steps are.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeConfigAnnounceFlags Set the ‘Announce Flags’ registry entry to 5, to indicate a reliable time source.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeTimeProvidersNTPClientSpecialPollInterval The ‘Special Poll Interval’ registry entry defines the period in seconds that the Windows 2003 machine should poll the NTP server. A recommended value is 900 seconds, which equates to every 15 minutes.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeParametersNtpServer The ‘NTP Server’ parameter is used to provide a list of IP addresses or DNS names, separated by a space, of NTP servers that the Windows 2003 machine can synchronise to.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeTimeProvidersNTPServerEnabled Changing the ‘Enabled’ flag to the value 1 enables the NTP Server.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeParametersType Change the server type to NTP by specifying ‘NTP’ in the ‘Type’ registry entry