Time synchronization is a service that maintains consistent server time across the network. Time synchronization is provided by the server operating system, not by eDirectory. eDirectory maintains its own internal time to ensure the proper order of eDirectory packets, but it gets its time from the server operating system.
If your network uses Windows or Linux, you should use Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize the servers, because it is a widely-used standard to provide time synchronization.
NTP functions as part of the UDP protocol suite, which is part of the TCP/IP protocol suite. Therefore, a computer using NTP must have the TCP/IP protocol suite loaded. Any computers on your network with Internet access can get time from NTP servers on the Internet.
NTP synchronizes clocks to the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) standard, which is the international time standard.
NTP introduces the concept of a stratum. A stratum-1 server has an attached accurate time piece such as a radio clock or an atomic clock. A stratum-2 server gets time from a stratum-1 server, and so on.
For more information on time synchronization software, see The Network Time Protocol Web site.
For information on time synchronization for Windows 2000 servers, see Setting Time Synchronization With Windows 2000 Web site.
You can use the xntpd Network Time Protocol (NTP) daemon to synchronize time on Linux servers. xntpd is an operating system daemon that sets and maintains the system time-of-day in synchronism with Internet standard time servers.
For information on running ntpd on Linux systems, see ntpd - Network Time Protocol (NTP) Daemon.
To verify that time is synchronized in the tree, run DSRepair from a server in the Tree that has at least Read/Write rights to the Tree object.
Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > NetIQ eDirectory Services.
Click dsrepair.dlm > Start.
Click Repair > Time Synchronization.
Run the following command:
ndsrepair -T