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JackAitkenFlag for United States of America

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Windows Hyper-V host losing time

I have a really strange problem.  I have a Hyper-V host that hosts 2 virtual servers.  One is a SBS2011 server.  The host is losing time.  30 minutes a day.  What is really puzzling is this host is a new server, that replaced another server that had the same issue.  On the old server, I replaced the battery on the MB, and even replaced the motherboard, but the time problem continued.  This is a new Dell R515 with dual quad core, 32 gigs.  There is a Netgear GS724T gig switch, and a Cisco ASA5505 firewall.  I can't figure out what is going on.  The time will get further behind as time passes, so it isn't logical that is is getting time from somewhere else, since the time will get progressively further behind.

Any ideas?
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George Simos
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Is this host part of a domain? If yes, is the domain controller holding PDC role hosted on the same host? If that’s the case, you should configure the host to synchronize time with external source (by default, all domain members synchronize the time with the PDC role holder).

If it’s doesn’t help, try updating the BIOS of the host server.
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The host is part of the domain, as it also hosts a tape drive for backup.  If I recall, when setting up an external time source the documentation was less than clear.  Do you have a good source for the process?

The bios is up to date.

Thanks for your help.
I was expecting this (domain membership of the Hyper-V) actually and that's the reason I proposed the external time source sync for the hyper-v and for the SBS 2011 which I guess holds the Domain that Hyper-V is a member of and because of its nature (SBS 2011) the PDC role is on it so if Hyper-V is a member and syncs time from the PDC (SBS 2011) but the latter syncs its time from the Hyper-V Integrations then it is one of the problems that will arise if you don't disable the time syncing of the VM DC from the VM Host (Hyper-V).
So my recommendation in this case is that you need to disable the Time Sync from your SBS VM integration settings.

Then Sync SBS's time with one or more external sources as I wrote in my first post and let Hyper-V sync with the PDC (without any configuration), you don't have to use the /register flag.

At least this way you will not have issues and time drifts, however keep in mind that the clock of Hyper-V will need the DC to be up in order to sync and when drift gets detected (between the bios clock and the OS's clock it will try to sync with the PDC to correct it, so it must be always -at least- available-).
All information you need can be found here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773263%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

Alternatively, you could disable the time synchronization in the Integration Services provided to the domain controller and leave the time keeping job to it. In that case, you have to make sure it's able to synchronise time from external source.
@spaperov: That's exactly what I wrote in my first post.
This fixed my problem.  Great examples of how to set the time source.  I disabled the time sync between the host and client servers and set the time source on the hosted SBS server as suggested.

Can't thank you enough for your quick and complete solution!!

Well done.
Glad to hear that you were helped!