Wrong time on Domain Controller running as guest on Hyper-V

Question

As stated in the headline our Domain Controller runs on Windows Server. This server is a Hyper-V Guest. The Hyper-V Host is joined to the Domain.

Unfortunately the Time on the Domain Controller is off by a couple of minutes. As a result all clients in our Domain have a wrong Windows Time.

How can this (time-synchronization) be fixed?

Solution

The Time synchronization Integration Service should be disabled on all domain members that are virtual machines running under Hyper-V, not just the DC. Your PDCe should be configured to sync time with a reliable external time source.

On boot up, the virtual machines will get their time from the Hyper-V host (because they have no RTC of their own) and from that point forward they should be syncing their time from the domain hierarchy.

From an elevated command prompt on the domain members run w32tm /query /source and make sure that the source is your PDCe. Then run w32tm /query /configuration and make sure the type is NT5DS.

From an elevated command prompt on the PDCe run w32tm /query /source and make sure that the source is a reliable external time source. Then run w32tm /query /configuration and make sure the type is NTP.

Comments

[TomTom]

Which version of Hyper-V? Did you bother setting up the external time source on the DC - as you should? So it pulls the time not from hyper-v but from the internet.

[HopelessN00b]

Odds are that your VM is synchronizing time with the hardware clock on the host, rather than a reliable time source (like an external NTP server).

[Thorsten Niehues]

We use Windows Server 2012. Hyper-V 6.2.9200.16384 I disabled TimeSync to the DC in Hyper-V - w32tm /query /source : time.windows.com,0x01

[Rex]

Did you follow the rest of the steps in the article TomTom links to? What is the result of the command w32tm /query /status You may also need to ensure NTP is allowed through your firewall (UDP/123)