If there is a discrepancy in the time on your version of Kemp 360 Central, this can cause issues such as Metered Licensing reports not being sent on time and other scheduled tasks being executed at unexpected times. To mitigate against this, when you upgrade your version of Kemp 360 Central to Version 1.21 or deploy a new version, Network Time Protocol (NTP) synchronization is enabled by default.

The date and time appears on the top right of the User Interface (UI). To view the current time settings, click the Settings and Configuration icon then click Date & Time.

To automatically set the time using an NTP server (enabled by default), select the Enable NTP check box and click Apply. The machine automatically synchronizes its time with an NTP server (pool.ntp.org is used by default). Kemp 360 Central checks every hour (35 minutes past the hour) and after reboots, to check if there is any discrepancy between the local time and the NTP server. If there is a discrepancy, Kemp 360 Central updates according to the time of the NTP server being used. If the NTP server fails or goes down at any time, a warning notification appears on the UI to the left of the time when the scheduled contact is not made.

Note: You can have up to three NTP servers in the Time Servers field. You must list the NTP servers in order of preference and separate each one using a comma. You can specify a time server as an IP address, a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or a public NTP server pool name. The time servers entered are validated on use, not when configured. If Kemp 360 Central cannot successfully contact the first time server, it tries the second time server (if specified); and, if that does not work, it tries the third time server (if specified). If all specified time servers cannot be contacted, then the warning described above is displayed in the banner.

Kemp 360 Central automatically displays the time zone of your local Kemp 360 Central session as determined by your browser. If you change your browser time zone setting, this is reflected on Kemp 360 Central. In the screenshot below, the system date and time is shown at the top of the display, along with the time zone (UTC-01:00) currently being used by the browser.

  • In the example above, the time zone is changed to Atlantic/Azores on the local machine, however, Kemp 360 Central displays the system date and time and also the time relative to UTC. The local time zone used by the browser is used in the Kemp 360 Central UI to display most time and date information, including scheduled actions (like backups and firmware upgrades) and the graphical data displays on the Graphs tab. The log viewer, however, uses UTC time to display log entries to make it easier to coordinate times between log events.

To manually set the time, ensure the Enable NTP check box is clear, then set the date and time using the dropdown menus provided. If you try to change the time manually, the following warning appears:

CAUTION: Do not change the time manually unless you are not using NTP. Kemp does not recommend manual date/time changes and recommends using NTP

You can authenticate the NTP server using a shared secret and key. To do this:

  1. Select the Authenticate check box. This activates the NTP Shared Secret and NTP Key ID fields.
  2. Select the NTP Key Type (at present, this is either MD5 or SHA-1).
  3. Type the NTP Shared Secret string. This can be up to 40 characters in length. If it is more than 20 characters, it is treated as a hex string.
    Note: The NTP Shared Secret must match the shared secret specified in the NTP time server’s configuration, or authentication with the NTP server will fail and the time will not be synchronized. If you specify multiple time servers, they must all use the same NTP authentication parameters.
  4. Type the NTP Key ID. This must be in the range from 1 to 65534.
  5. Click Apply to apply the changes.