best practice for tyme synchronization

[GDWhite]

I think I recall being told in a vSphere class that I took that the best practice for time synchronization of the Windows Guests on ESX or ESXi 4 is to not use W32Time on the Guest and instead to use NTP on the Host. Is this correct? If I configure NTP on the Host, do I also need to configure SNTP(W23Time) on the Guest and point them both to the same internal time server or will the NTP on the Host keep the Guests updated with accurate time?

Thanks for your advice.

[Troy_Clavell]

hopefully this will help in answering some of your questions

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1318

[GDWhite]

Thank you for the quick response. In reading the article, I see that it suggests running W32Time on the Windows Guest, yet it also contains a line that indicates the following: 'For VMware ESX, run NTP in the service console. For VMware ESXi, run NTP on the VMkernel.'

If I am reading this correctly, I take it to say that I should configure W32Time on the Guest and Configure NTP on the Host both. Do you agree with that assessment?

[Troy_Clavell]

correct. If using windows time, just ensure you aren't also synchronizing with ESX. Which, by default is not set that way in the guest tools.