NTP server configuration

Instead of manually setting the system date and time, you can specify one or more Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers and peers to synchronize the time automatically. By default, NTP version 4 is used, but you can specify version 3 instead. You can perform a one-time action that synchronizes the system clock with a specific NTP server. NTP is enabled by default. The appliance is pre-configured with four NTP servers your appliance can use if it can reach them.

The appliance can authenticate that the time it obtains from an NTP server is from a known and trusted source. The system clock is updated only if a key ID in the incoming NTP packet matches a key ID configured on the appliance, and if that key ID is mapped to the same MD5 or SHA1 hash value stored on both the NTP server and the appliance. If the key ID/value pair on NTP server and appliance do not match, the clock is not updated. NTP authentication is enabled by default, but the NTP server must already have the key ID/value pair, and the same key ID/value pair must be configured on the appliance and then associated with the NTP server. A total of 16 keys can be configured on a single appliance.