ESXi NTP not syncing

What I found was that NTP has a default maximum correction of about 1000 seconds. I had this same issue, but if I set the clocks 3-4 minutes off, they would auto correct within about 15 minutes. Using ESXi 4.1, almost none of the ntpd commands gave me any output, but I was able to see the corrections happening in the /var/log/messages.

How to build a Lab Manager Server using ESX or ESXi

 

1) Firmware Upgrades, make sure VT & DEP are enabled.

2) If Blade Chassis

a. Make sure networking is ready, i.e. virtual connect

b. Rename blade in chassis/iLo

3) If using shared storage (and you better be)

a. Fiber Channel

    i. setup VSAN’d and Zoned.

b. iSCSI

    ii. Properly setup

c. Present LUN(s) to Server

4) Install ESX or ESXi

5) ESXi only

a. Change Root Password

b. Change IP to static

c. Change hostname

6) Allow SSH (if you want)

7) Install Hardwareproviders/ agents, i.e. HP ESX Agent

8) Add to vCenter

9) Apply vCenter templates (this should do the following automatically)

a. Setup Networking vNics, vMotion & Management

b. NTP

c. NFS storage

10) Patch with VUM

11) Setup Monitoring, SiteScope, vCM, etc..

12) Add to Lab Manager

The disadvantages to using ESXi instead of ESX for Lab Manager

1) no timezone support, ESXi is set to UTC only. (but this doesn't cause any issues that I can find)
2) No export to SMB (window) file shares, so users can't export VMs or templates.