Hi I read "Xen, VMware, and Other Virtual Machine Implementations".

Is a Virtual Machine not a good candidate to serve as an NTP Server , under any circumstances? For example, will a VM (running RHEL and chronyd and serving as an NTP Server) which syncs with another Hardware Server or an Appliance (eg. Meingberg), be fit to serve as an NTP Server?

-- JayVijayan - 05 Jul 2024

Any ntpd instance on "real" hardware will perform better than ntpd on virtual hardware. The difference may be slight if the virtual instance ALWAYS has immediate access to things including CPU, memory, disk, and network. As access to these resources becomes more constrained, the worse ntpd will perform. And since the NTP process weighs the most recent multiple (currently 8 ) samples, any degradation of quality of any sample will degrade the overall consideration and performance quality of that ntpd instance.