Dell Unity: Cannot synchronize with NTP servers having stratum value of 6 or greater

Summary: Unity arrays cannot synchronize with NTP servers having a stratum value of 6 or greater. No error is shown in Unisphere, but the Unity clock does not synchronize.

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Symptoms

In this example, the NTP server is reachable, but Unity cannot synchronize with it because the stratum value is set to 6. This can be determined from the output of the svc_ntp -i command; there is no '*' symbol at the beginning of the line for the NTP server.
  
06:40:01 service spb:~/user# svc_ntp -i
NTP Status:
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx    LOCAL(0)      6 u   67   64  377    0.156  637.565   0.105
*peer            127.0.0.1        6 s   15   64  376    0.026    0.089   0.124

List of associations:
ind assid status  conf reach auth condition  last_event cnt
===========================================================
  1 45538  9024   yes   yes  none    reject   reachable  2
  2 45539  961a   yes   yes  none  sys.peer    sys_peer  1

List of servers in ntp.conf:
server      xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx iburst prefer                                          

Timestamps:
hwclock:1667976004 systime:1667976004 uptime:434601.65

Detailed Timestamps:
Wed Nov  9 06:40:05 UTC 2022
Wed Nov  9 06:40:06 2022  -0.953423 seconds
 06:40am  up 5 days  0:43,  6 users,  load average: 112.37, 112.83, 113.09


Cause

In /etc/ntp.conf, there is the following line which prevents ntpd from synchronizing with NTP servers having a stratum value of 6 or greater.

tos orphan 6

Resolution

 
There are two options to resolve the issue.
  1. Use NTP servers configured with a stratum value of 5 or smaller.  
Wait for 10 minutes or so, and then run the svc_ntp -s command to verify that ntpd is synchronizing with the NTP server. The output should have an asterisk to the left of the NTP entry, and the stratum value (st) should be 5 or smaller.
  
06:58:01 service spb:~/user# svc_ntp -i
NTP Status:
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
* xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx   LOCAL(0)      5 u   35   64  377    0.170   -0.123   0.041
 peer            127.0.0.1        6 s   47   64   37    0.059  -637.13   0.102

List of associations:
ind assid status  conf reach auth condition  last_event cnt
===========================================================
  1 25293  961a   yes   yes  none  sys.peer    sys_peer  1
  2 25294  9014   yes   yes  none    reject   reachable  1

List of servers in ntp.conf:
server      xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx iburst prefer                                          

Timestamps:
hwclock:1667977331 systime:1667977331 uptime:435927.21

Detailed Timestamps:
Wed Nov  9 07:02:12 UTC 2022
Wed Nov  9 07:02:13 2022  -0.953428 seconds
 07:02am  up 5 days  1:05,  7 users,  load average: 112.32, 112.49, 112.74
  1. Contact Dell Technical Support or your licensed service provider to edit the /etc/ntp.conf file and change the value in the following line to support stratum values greater than the default of 5 as this method requires root access.
tos orphan 6

The maximum supported value is 15.

Example: 
# cp /etc/ntp.conf /cores/service/user/ntp.conf.bak
# sed -i -e 's/tos orphan 6/tos orphan 7/g' /etc/ntp.conf
# diff /etc/ntp.conf /cores/service/user/ntp.conf.bak
86c86
< tos orphan 7
---
> tos orphan 6

Then, run the following command:

svc_ntp -s

Note: The tos orphan value in /etc/ntp.conf may revert back to the original value after a Unity OE upgrade.

Note: If the time difference is too large, a Storage Processor (SP) reboot may be required for the change to take effect.

Affected Products

Dell EMC Unity
Article Properties
Article Number: 000205159
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 09 Jun 2023
Version:  2
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