[time-nuts] Selecting server hardware (newbie question)

Dr. David Kirkby david.kirkby at onetel.net
Fri Jan 27 23:45:17 EST 2006


Allen Coates wrote:
> I am trying to select a host machine for a dedicated NTP server.  I have 
> several spare PCs to hand, with processor speeds around 500 MHz - all my 
> budget will allow for the moment.
> 
> Initial experiments have been with Fedora core 4 and the "standard issue" NTP 
> daemon.     I set the PCs up as a group of peers, and using ntpq -p, observed 
> each one, as seen by the others.
> 
> Two of the machines seem to run "sweeter" than the others, but I don't know 
> how to go on, and objectively compare their performance or suitability as a 
> server.
> 
> Can anyone help? 
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> Allen C
I'm sure others will know far more than me, since I have never anything 
beyond one computer (Sun) to act as an ntp server to roughly keep all my 
computers together. I've never bothered hooking up GPS to that.

But here are my thoughts, for what they are worth.

My logic would suggest you might want to keep the amount of processing 
the computer does to an absolute minimum, so there is less chance of it 
loosing a the CPU time slice in the middle of servicing an NTP request.

That would suggest only running the bare minimum of services. That tends 
to make me think of OpenBSD is it is not affect by bloat like Linux 
distributions. I know one list member who would not disagree with that 
choice!!!

I don't know if NTP runs as a kernel thread, in which case I don't think 
it can be interrupted.

As for comparisons, I think the NTP algorithm attaches different weight 
to the answers it gets from different time servers, based on the 
variability of their results. Perhaps you can get those statics.



More information about the time-nuts mailing list