What is the best OS for NTP server?

Linux and Unix-Like Linux
1

Hello

I need to create NTP server for all my devices, What is the best OS for NTP Server? "CentOS, Redhat, Ubuntu "

I tried before Ubuntu but some of device not detect the server

Need your recommendation

Thank you

2

I don't think this is OS dependent; any serious *nix distribution will do. It is important that the daemon is running and network access is not disabled/forbidden.

3

It depends on what central servers you have that are used for general services such as DNS, LDAP, etc. Often these are Windows, but not always.

You can also buy dedicated devices that listen to a radio signal and provide them as a local service or listen to clock sites on the internet. Like RudiC says, the OS is not really important and indeed once you have a reliable time source most NTP clients are servers by default, so you can actually build layers in depending on your geographic structure, for example:-

  • In your main data centre, you define a couple (two or three) servers to listen to multiple internet provided clocks in addition to their normal roles. These are your first tier.
  • You have 4-6 servers that listen to your first tier and act as your second tier, in addition to their normal roles.
  • Other servers on-site all listen to a selection of the second tier servers
  • Remote sites need 2-3 servers that listen to the second tier servers in addition to their normal role. These are your third tier.
  • Other servers in remote sites all listen to the third tier servers.

This is not prescriptive, but should minimise traffic whilst giving resilience. The servers chosen to provide the service should have an existing role. There is little point in incurring the costs (physical/logical/licences/effort/patching etc.) just to run a dedicated time server.

If you have hundreds of client machines at a site, you should consider increasing the number of time-servers as appropriate to ensure they are not overloaded. Not every client needs to watch every time server, probably 3 would be sensible.

Just my thoughts, but I hope that this helps,
Robin