How to monitor the current time on a server?

I was curious if anybody has a good way to monitor the current time on a server against a known good time source such as the time on the monitoring system?

We have a problem where (despite being configured to time sync) where some of our servers time will significantly drift and I would like a way to check that time and make sure it's current.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

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mdriskell

I've been trolling a bunch of powershell forums lately for different custom monitors I had to build...I stumbled across this one a few days ago and bookmarked it because I thought I might have a use for it down the road. It compares the local system to time.nist.gov and then outputs the difference in seconds...I'm sure it could be modified pretty easily to suit solarwinds format. If not should give you a good starting point.

PowerShell Script to Monitor Server Date and Time using PRTG Network Monitor | dave.harris.net

byrona

Awesome, I will certainly give it a look and see if we can adapt it. If I get something working I will post it to the Content Exchange.

mdriskell

Great then when I get around to it I can just install your template instead of trying to figure it out for myself.

Bronx

Great! There's supposed to be a Scripting forum/library around here somewhere. If anyone can find it, that would be a great place to post it.

Atamido

If you just want the skew, and it's a Windows server, I made this template which will run the PowerShell locally on the poller and get the time from an NTP server and WMI query against the remote Windows server. It then provide the time difference in seconds.

aLTeReGo

SolarWinds has also released an application template for measuring clock drift (skew). Ours however uses a defined NTP source as a point of comparison instead of local time on the Orion server. It's also available for both Windows and Linux/Unix hosts.

Server Clock Drift (PowerShell)

Server Clock Drift (Perl)

byrona

Awesome, thanks for pointing this out. I will certainly take a look.

Atamido

I may not have been clear. The linked template also has you to specify an NTP server as the source of comparison. The difference is that it doesn't require the remote management be configured on the Windows server.

rachel.fisher

Alterego,

Is there way that we an use the Orion Server as a Point of reference instead of an NTP server? Also, we are trying to get this running on F5 devices who would need linux communication (perl or other) rather than powerwshell. Is there a different component monitor or application monitor that we could modify?