How to Configure SNTP/NTP Time Source on HP ProCurve MSM 765zl Wireless Mobility Controller

I was recently investigating authentication methods for our Wireless system and wanted to test out Active Directory.  Basically, the controller would be checking directly with Active Directory if clients should be allowed to access our Wireless network.  After we started configuring Active Directory Authentication we noticed that the time on our MSM controller was off, going under Management -> Time only shows the time on the controller.  After a bit of Google Fu we found that the MSM Controller will get the time off the zl Chassis it is plugged into but you need to be on 5.5.3.0 or higher.

The below configuration is an example of logging into the MSM zl Module itself and configuring the time, you can also do this directly on your zl Chasis in config mode and using the NTP commands below.

First thing we need to do is find where our MSM module is installed on our zl chasis, we can do this by issuing the below command which outputs the below.

CoreSwitch(config)# show services
                Installed Services
 Slot   Index Description              Name
 B  1. Services zl Module              services-module
 B  2. HP ProCurve MSM765 zl Int-Ctlr  msm765-application

 
Okay, so now we know where the MSM module is, let’s log into it and get into configuration mode of the zl module by issuing the below commands.

CoreSwitch(config)# services  B 2
CoreSwitch(msm765-application-B)> enable
CoreSwitch(msm765-application-B)# conf
CoreSwitch(msm765-application-B)(config)#

And finally, we need to configure the NTP settings by configuring NTP, using the SNTP protocol and pointing it to an NTP server, which in our case was a Server 2008 R2 PDC.

CoreSwitch(msm765-application-B)(config)# ntp protocol sntp
CoreSwitch(config)# ntp server 1 10.1.0.104
CoreSwitch(config)# ntp server
CoreSwitch(config)#

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