[ntp:questions] ntp server pool advice

unruh unruh at invalid.ca
Wed Dec 21 22:39:23 UTC 2011


On 2011-12-21, Chris Albertson <albertson.chris at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 12:25 AM, ben slimup <slimup78 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> i m currently working on some project that needs a particular ntp distribution design:
>>
>> i have to site with 4 public ip address, that can be used on both site, i need to serve between 100000 client to 1 million.
>
> You have 1,000,000 computers under your control?  really?   The
> hardest job will be to distribute 1M config files.  With 1M computyrs
> I'd assume you will have multiple hardware failures every day.
>
> Why not direct all those computers to use the public NTP servers?  Why
> do they need to look at your NTP servers?


NONONONONONONO. Why in the world would you advise him to completely
overload a bunch of public servers. He is being responsible and
overloading his own machines which is much much better.

While I agree that the chances that he really has 1 million machines he
should be serving them himself. 

>
> OK assuming that you really do have 1M client computers and they need
> to look at your NTP server then you need to build a set of NTP servers
> much like the public NTP server pool.   What is different about NTP
> servers from web servers is with NTP you do NOT need a fail-over
> system.  Instead what you do is point each of the 1M computers to
> several of your NTP servers and then each client will figure out which
> of your servers are the "best".   So you can take down any NTP server
> and add another and not disrupt anything.
>
> If fact automatic switch over, like is done by ome network switches is
> not a good thing with NTP.  Let the client determine the server is
> faulty.
>
> You will need about a half dozen NTP servers. I would distribute them
> geographically
>
>
> Chris Albertson
> Redondo Beach, California



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