[ntp:questions] NTP servers redundancy

Richard B. Gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Sun Jan 31 14:25:17 UTC 2010


Rob wrote:
> Danny Mayer <mayer at ntp.org> wrote:
>> Ryan Malayter wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 3:57 PM, Rob <nomail at example.com> wrote:
>>>> Compare it with a RAID-1 disk system. Â When one disk has an unreadable
>>>> sector, the situation is clear: use the sector from the other disk.
>>>> When both disks are readable but return different data, you cannot know
>>>> which one is correct.
>>>>
>>>> This normally is solved by not checking for that condition, rather than
>>>> to use 3 disks and a majority vote (which still could disagree between
>>>> all 3 disks).
>>> Disks use error correcting codes (usually some layered Reed-Solomon
>>> scheme) at the physical layer to detect errors. Disks rarely, if ever,
>>> return *incorrect* data. They return known-good data or 'Read failed".
>>>
>> Right. With disks the data stored on it should be the same for all
>> mirrored disks. If they are not you have a hardware or software problem
>> with the code that reads and writes to the disks.
> 
> The problem is that the poster started with the assumption that an NTP
> clock could be broken and could possibly return the wrong time even
> though it indicates that it is synced.
> 
> He then explains that IF this happens THEN you have a problem when you
> don't have 25 servers in your list.
> 
> But my reasoning is that there are always going to be cases where you
> have a problem, no matter how many countermeasures you take.  The disk
> is an example of this.  The disk should return good data or "read failed",
> but what if it doesn't???
> 
The driver should then return "timeout".

> My experience shows that when you try to counter-act any posisble failure
> mode you can think about, you end up with a complicated system that will
> fail in another way than you envisioned, often due to some inadvertent
> side-effect of the added complication.

Even if it were possible to handle any conceivable failure, the cost in 
terms of effort required is usually prohibitive!




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