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yashwani
Staff
yashwani
Staff
March 25, 2026

Technical Tip: NTP configuration and verifying NTP health check on FortiAnalyzer BigData

  • March 25, 2026
  • 0 replies
  • 250 views
Description

This article describes how to configure, monitor, and manually verify an NTP server Health Check, along with the required steps after changing NTP settings.
Scope FortiAnalyzer BigData.
Solution

NTP Configuration:

 

Configure an NTP server on FortiAnalyzer Big Data.

 

Picture1.png

 

NTP Changes and Kudu Restart:

 

NTP settings are synchronized to the backend automatically, but not applied to Kudu until a restart. A notification will appear indicating a restart is required.

 

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  1. Apply new NTP configuration via GUI or CLI (config system ntp) and wait for notification.
  2. Go to Monitor -> Health Checks, run NTP Health Check and confirm the status is green.
  3. Schedule a maintenance window and restart Kudu via Services -> Data Lake -> Kudu -> Restart.

 

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  1. After the restart, run a Database Health Check and confirm the status is green.

 

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Verification of NTP:

Step 1: Navigate to Health Dashboard

  1. Log in to Cluster Manager UI.
  2. Go to Monitor -> Health.

 

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It can also be executed by selecting NTP Health Check and running Test:

 

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Configuring the schedule for NTP Health Check:

 

Locate NTP Health Check and select Configure.

 

This configuration allows for how frequently the NTP health check should be executed or the intervals at which the NTP health check will run. Internally, this is being executed by a crontab job.

 

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Settings:

Enable Auto-remediation.
Set Schedule to Advanced.

  • Cron: 0 41 * ? * * * (runs at 41 minutes past every hour).
  • Retry: 3 attempts, 120 seconds backoff.

 

Viewing the Last NTP health check result:

 

Picture8.png

 

Manual NTP verification:

 

To perform a manual check using the CLI, run the following command from the controller blade:

 

Picture9.png

 

Or:

Using a manual chronyd by specifying a server:

 

chronyd -Q -t 15 'server x.x.x.x iburst'    <------ x.x.x.x is NTP server address.

 

Successful output indicates a working NTP. Failure indicates a connectivity or configuration issue.

 

Additional guidance:

 

CLI example to configure an NTP server:

 

Picture10.png

 

NTP multi-server behavior:

FAZBD synchronizes with multiple NTP servers and automatically selects the best one based on stratum, reachability, offset, and latency.

 

Impact of adding new NTP servers:

No impact if the server passes checks. If no valid NTP server is available, the database will not start.
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