Synchronizing the system time

The timed daemon enables you to keep the system time for your storage system automatically synchronized with a time server. Using this feature is advised, because problems can occur when the storage system clock is inaccurate.

Considerations

To automatically keep your storage system time synchronized, you need the name of at least one time server. For best results, supply the name of more than one time server in case one becomes unavailable.

There are two protocols you can use for time synchronization: SNTP and rdate. SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) is more accurate; therefore, it is the preferred protocol. You can get a list of public NTP (Network Time Protocol) time servers (used for SNTP) from the NTP.Servers Web at http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Servers/WebHome.

If you can’t access an SNTP server, you can use rdate. Many Unix servers can function as an rdate server; see your system administrator to set up or identify an rdate server in your environment.

Steps

If the current time for the storage system is not fairly close to the actual time, use the date command to set the system time to the correct time.
At the command line, set the appropriate timed options using the options command.
At a minimum, you must set the proto option to use either sntp or rdate (sntp is the preferred protocol), and set the servers option to at least one valid time server for the protocol you select.
For more information about the timed options, see the na_options(1) man page.
Enter the following command to enable the timed daemon:options timed.enable on

The timed options
The timed options support features such as time synchronization and scheduling, logging time changes to the console, and specifying the protocol used for time synchronization.

Parent topic: General System Maintenance

Related tasks

Setting the system date and time