About NTP Configuration

A Network Time Protocol (NTP) server provides a precise time source (radio clock or atomic clock) to synchronize the system clocks of network devices. NTP is transported over User Datagram Protocol UDP/IP. An NTP server receives its time from a reference time source, such as a radio clock or atomic clock, attached to the time. NTP distributes this time across the network. In a large enterprise network, having one time standard for all network devices is critical for management reporting and event logging functions when trying to correlate interacting events logged across multiple devices.

Time synchronization happens when several frames are exchanged between clients and servers. The switches in client mode know the address of ozne or more NTP servers. The servers act as the time source and receive client synchronization requests.

When you perform NTP configurations, and distribution is enabled, the entire server/peer configuration is distributed to all the switches in the fabric. You automatically acquire a fabric-wide lock when you issue the first configuration command after you enabled distribution in a switch. The NTP application uses the effective and pending database model to store or commit the commands based on your configuration. After making the configuration changes, you can choose to discard the changes or to commit them. In either case, the lock is released.



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