We have 5 virtual Windows 2003 servers running Citrix in our company, that users can log onto,
Every so often one of the servers will change it's date/time so far ahead, users are unable to log on because of the time difference between the 2003 server(s) and the DC (server 2008).
I have to log into the servers and manually change the date/time to enable users to be able to log in.
The regions are all set correctly,
the commands I have used:
net time setsntp:dcbox
net stop w32time
net start w32time
w32tm /resync /rediscover
and
net time /domain /set
These commands set the system time to the time of the DC, however the settings may last a few days or a few weeks its unpredictable.
I have also noticed that the affected server does not restart overnight (scheduled to restart around midnight) and in the event viewer the date jumps from 6/9/11 to 9/9/11 at around 7.50pm
Any help would be much appreciated.
Best Answer
You didn't mention your virtualisation platform; is it VMWare? We've had issues with VMs losing time, which I assumed were due to the VMs sharing their host's CPU. There's an option in VMWare tools to synchronise the VMs clock with their host's, which might help.
Also, I assume dcbox is your domain controller? If the sync problems are due to the fact that the servers are virtual, you might have more success syncing with an external NTP server instead, like pool.ntp.org.