"Ben Rockwood" <b...@cuddletech.com> wrote in message
news:4daf84fc.7060...@cuddletech.com...
I've read in the past that clients should always have an odd-number of
NTP servers; 1 server or 3 servers but not 2. If I recall the reason
was that clients could become "confused" and needs a tie breaker.
Question 1: I want to challenge this old assumption. Is there truth to
it?
In many environments there is a desire to have 2 NTP servers for
redundancy purposes, but not 3 due to limited resources.
If you have three servers, and one fails, which of the two remaining
servers do clients believe? You can configure your clients to have as
many servers as you want, but perhaps 4 is the minimum, and I have seen
five and seven suggested. Of course, depending on your application, it
may be acceptable that some of the servers are not as accurate as others
so you could have just one or two local servers, and three Internet
servers configured on the clients.
Question 2: Furthermore, if you have 2 local NTP servers is it
preferable to have them sync off of different sources to avoid a client
syncing servers that are using the same reference clock? ie: Is this
bad?:
[]
Thank you.
benr.
In that situation, I would agree with Chris Albertson and get two GPS
receivers - they are now quite cheap (e.g. about US $35 including the
antenna) so you could perhaps have two in different locations depending on
your network and buildings. If the servers are syncing from the Internet,
I might have them with a configuration including, say, four pool servers,
plus one "good" local server marked as "prefer", but a different local
server in each case. A server offering a good public service, such as
Manchester and Glasgow in the UK.
Just some ideas.
Cheers,
David
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