Hello, I'm seeking advice on what would be the best configuration to build a private/internal stratum 2 pool. The idea is to provide internal hosts/servers (~5000) with an NTP pool to sync to. I'm not seeking very high precision/accuracy, I'm just hoping to provide reliable and uniform time reference. I've settled on running 4 ntpd on 4 different servers (the "4" comes from NTP FAQ regarding the minimum number of hosts) I've also selected 4 stratum 1 available and public servers in my area. I'm currently reviewing NTP FAQ regarding what would be the best architecture but I've no clue : - Option 1 : each one of the ntpd is configured to sync to one and only one upstream stratum 1 server. In this option my stratum 2 hosts are not aware of each other. On the client side I configure a pool pointing to a DNS Round Robin enslaving my 4 NTP servers. => This works OK but it does not seem to be the one described in this NTP architecture http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-s-config-adv.htm where stratum n-1 are peered together - Option 2 : Starting from Option 1, I add on each stratum 2 server a peer directive pointing to the 3 others. After some time, an NTP hierarchy is created stratum 3 and sometimes 4 gets created. For exemple ntp03 becomes a stratum 3 poiting to ntp01 which is pointing to an upstream stratum 1. ntp03 totally ignores it's configured stratum 1 (for many valid reasons I guess) => On the client side too, the one ntp the peer "elected" as the best is also the one chosed by the client. This Option seems to be more aligned with previsously referenced architecture but I can't tell why I don't like it (maybe that I'm expecting that my pool would be stratum uniform)
Do you think that I should be using the same 4 upstream NTP stratum 1 servers on all my stratum 2 servers? My failure scenario is if one of those upstream is faulty, my pool detect it and everything continues to work (and if my Internet connection is dead, I have more bigger problems than NTP going out of sync) How would you do it ? Do you have any pointers to reference NTP architectures ? Thank you for your help Youssef Ghorbal _______________________________________________ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions
