Wired Intelligent Edge

We recently replaced a Customer's Cisco environment with Aruba 5402 zl2 as Core & 2930F as distribution switches. Everything was smooth until we discovered NTP was not getting synced on any of the switches. 

Scenario tested:

-Switches were put same VLAN as NTP server.

- ip dns domain-name command was used.

- Firmware WC.16.06 upgraded.

-Aruba TAC was aligned

Followings are commands

timesync ntp
ntp unicast
ntp server 172.16.1.12 iburst
ntp server 172.16.12.11 iburst

ntp enable

time timezone 530 (IST)

When we run NTP status - we see not syncronized.

Can anyone suggest what further troubleshooting can be done?

Thank you!

So I guess you already checked layer 3 reachability (firewalls, routing etc) to the NTP-server?

Are you able to try SNTP?

timesync sntp
sntp unicast
sntp server priority 1 <ip>

Greetings!

Here is another command (with example output) that you can use for NTP troubleshooting:

switch(config)# show ntp associations detail 

 NTP Association Information


  IP Address     : xx.xx.xx.xx          Peer Mode         : Server              
  Status         : Config,Sane,Master   Peer Poll Intvl   : 10                  
  Stratum        : 3                    Root Delay        : 0.05072 sec         
  Ref Assoc ID   : 1                    Root Dispersion   : 0.04526 sec         
  Assoc Name     : NTP Association 1    Reach             : 177                 
  Reference ID   : xx.xx.xx.xx          Delay             : 0.00000 sec         
  Our Mode       : Client               Offset            : 0.00000 sec         
  Our Poll Intvl : 10                   Precision         : 2**-23              
  Dispersion     : 12.83116 sec        
  Association In Packets      : 45                  
  Association Out Packets     : 45                  
  Association Error Packets   : 1                   
  Origin Time     : Thu Oct  4 15:14:35 2018            
  Receive Time    : Thu Oct  4 15:14:35 2018            
  Transmit Time   : Thu Oct  4 15:14:35 2018            

  -------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Filter Delay =  0.0009 0.0008 0.0010 0.0010 0.0009 0.0009 0.0000 0.0000
  Filter Offset = 0.1020 0.0796 0.0715 0.0589 0.0431 0.0082 0.0000 0.0000

  IP Address     : xx.xx.xx.xx          Peer Mode         : None                
  Status         : Config,Insane        Peer Poll Intvl   : 17                  
  Stratum        : 16                   Root Delay        : 0.00000 sec         
  Ref Assoc ID   : 2                    Root Dispersion   : 0.00000 sec         
  Assoc Name     : NTP Association 2    Reach             : 0                   
  Reference ID   : xx.xx.xx.xx          Delay             : 0.00000 sec         
  Our Mode       : Client               Offset            : 0.00000 sec         
  Our Poll Intvl : 10                   Precision         : 2**0                
  Dispersion     : 16.00000 sec        
  Association In Packets      : 0                   
  Association Out Packets     : 168                 
  Association Error Packets   : 0                   
  Origin Time     : Mon Jan  1 00:00:00 1990            
  Receive Time    : Mon Jan  1 00:00:00 1990            
  Transmit Time   : Thu Oct  4 15:21:21 2018            

  -------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Filter Delay =  0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
  Filter Offset = 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000

Also, check the switch event logs for reachability errors or any other reported issues. 

We used Wireshark in next level of troubleshoots. NTP Sync packets were sent to windows servers. We then tried to SNTP with following commands:

timesync sntp
sntp unicast
sntp 30 (30 sec poll intervals)
sntp server priority 1 172.16.1.12
time timezone 330 (for IST)

Authentication is not used. we just migrated to SNTP protocol and it worked!

To conclude further I guess Aruba have compatibilty issues between NTP protocol & Windows NTP server.

Thanks!