It is the responsibility of the Appliance Administrator to manage the appliance time.

Time displays the current appliance time and allows you to enable Network Time Protocol (NTP) and set the primary and secondary NTP servers. In addition, when enabled, the NTP client status can be displayed. As a best practice, set an NTP server to eliminate possible time-related issues.

While not recommended, you can also set the appliance time on a primary (not cluster) manually.

CAUTION: Changing appliance time can result in unintended consequences with processes running on the appliance. For example, there could be a disruption of password check and change profiles and audit log time stamps could be misleading. Do not set the system time before or after the validity period of the Safeguard internal certificates because the appliance will not function.

Clustered environments

NTP setting changes are made on the primary appliance in a cluster. When a replica appliance is enrolled into the cluster, it points to the primary appliance's VPN IP address as the Primary NTP Server and the NTP client service is enabled on the replica appliance. When performing a failover operation to promote a replica to be the new primary, the Primary NTP Server is preserved and applied from the 'old' primary appliance.

Warnings

The following warnings display if your local time is not within five minutes of the appliance time. One Identity recommends that you set an NTP server to eliminate possible time-related issues.

  • Upon log on: Warning: The time associated with Safeguard and your local time are off by 5 or more minutes. Contact the Safeguard administrator to correct this issue before further use.
  • On the Settings > Appliance > Time page: The appliance time and your local time have a difference of 5 or more minutes. It is recommended to set an NTP server.

To enable Network Time Protocol (NTP) and set the primary and secondary NTP servers

  1. Go to Time:
    • web client: Navigate to Appliance > Time.

  2. Select the Enable Network Time Protocol (NTP) check box then provide the following information:

    • Primary NTP Server: Enter the IP address or DNS name of the primary NTP server.

    • Secondary NTP Server: (Optional) Enter the IP address or DNS name of the secondary NTP server.

  3. Click Save to save your selections.

    When NTP is enabled, click Show Details to view the following information about the NTP client status.

    • Last Sync Time
    • Leap Indicator
    • Poll Interval
    • Precision
    • Reference ID
    • Root Delay
    • Root Dispersion
    • Source
    • Stratum
    • Last Sync Error
    • Time Since Last Good Sync

If NTP is set and you need to change the time, go to the API and use Set-SafeguardTime. For information about using the API, see Using the API.

To manually set the appliance time on a primary (not cluster)

To manually set the time on the appliance (primary not cluster), follow the steps below.

CAUTION: Manually setting the time should be done with caution. Time changes can cause critical data loss.

  1. Go to Time:
    • web client: Navigate to Appliance > Time.
  2. Clear the Enable Network Time Protocol (NTP) check box.
  3. Click OK.
  4. Click Edit.
  5. For the most accurate time, complete the following steps quickly.
    1. On the Set System Time dialog, click Use Client Time to use the local time or select the date and time.
    2. Click OK. The Set System Time warning dialog displays indicating that: Extreme time changes in Safeguard may cause critical data loss.
    3. Type Set Time in the dialog box to confirm then click OK.