get_ntp_status
Check per-host NTP configuration health, including configured servers and ntpd service state, to identify misconfigured or unreachable hosts and inconsistent time sources.
Instructions
[READ] Per-host NTP configuration health (servers + ntpd service state).
Returns the list envelope; every matching host is enumerated, so truncated
is always False. Each row has host, reachable, ntp_servers, ntpd_running,
ntpd_policy and a healthy flag (servers configured AND ntpd running). The
SOAP API does not expose live clock offset or stratum — this is configuration
health only; for actual offset use esxcli on the host.
healthy/ntp_servers/ntpd_running are null — not false/empty — for a host
vCenter could not reach or could not read. Null means nothing was observed;
false means NTP is misconfigured. Filtering rows for healthy == false will
not surface the unread ones, so check the envelope's hosts_unreachable
and hosts_unreadable counts (with unreachable_note / unreadable_note)
before reporting the estate as healthy. Unreachable: vCenter cannot reach the
host (reachable false). Unreadable: this account cannot read the host's state
(reachable null) — not known to be down.
The envelope's ntp_sources_consistent compares hosts with each other:
false when hosts that have servers configured use different ones (each row
can still be healthy — this is how clocks drift apart), with
ntp_sources_note naming which host uses which servers; null when fewer
than two hosts have servers to compare.
Prefer this over get_host_services for time problems: that tool reports whether ntpd runs but not which servers are configured. Fixing NTP is a write; use vmware-aiops.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| target | No | vCenter/ESXi target from config (default if omitted). | |
| host_name | No | Filter to a single host by exact name (None = all hosts). |