RE: NTP Server

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2010, Brandon Kim wrote:
> By local I meant in-house, on-site in our datacenter.

What do you think it means to have a NTP server in-house, on-site in your 
datacenter?  There all many different levels of NTP servers.

Putting some free software on a spare computer, and synchronizing it to a 
few public NTP servers on the Internet?

Or buying a $5,000 specialized NTP hardware device (or more if you want 
backups) and installing an external antenna to pick up a radio reference 
clock source from a satellite or radio station?

If you already provide DNS/DHCP and other services in your datacenter, its
usually not that much effort to add the NTP service.  In many cases, the
software is already part of the base operating system package, or easily
added to most modern systems.

But in most cases, NTP seems to be treated as an unsupported service.  If 
it works, great.  If it doesn't, don't complain.  If the person who cared
about NTP leaves, no one else even knows it exists. If you need traceable 
time, or have some other regulatory requirement, its going to be more 
work.  My point is there isn't one answer.