Domain Time II Manager - Variance Report tab

The Variance Report feature in Domain Time II Manager is intended for obtaining a quick snapshot of your network status. If you are interested in keeping periodic variance scan results for historical records and to be alerted of severe synchronization problems, you should configure the Monitor Service or Audit Server to send automatic email summaries and alerts. Audit Server also gives you many advanced options for keeping this data for auditing purposes.

The variance report in Domain Time II Manager is similar to the variance reports generated by the DTCheck command-line utility included with the Management Tools, and also to the ones automatically generated by the Monitor Service. The Domain Time II Audit Server can compile much more extensive variance reports and keep additional information for historical purposes.

Generate a Variance Report
Click the Scan button to start the variance scan. The variance report will then be complied and displayed. You may update the report at any time by clicking the Refresh button.

The variance scan queries each machine on the network for it clock status and compares it to a machine designated as the Reference Clock. It then compiles a list showing the amount of variance on each machine. The list is color coded so that you can see at a glance any machines that are out-of-sync and take remedial action.

Include NTP servers in scan instructs Manager to list any NTP servers it finds on the network.

Discover all DT2 machines causes all Domain Time machines present on the network to be listed, regardless of whether or not their own settings specify that they should respond to a variance query.

Normally, the only Domain Time II machines that will appear in the Variance Report are those who have their Respond to DTCheck (variance query) option set. Domain Time II Servers have this option turned on by default, Clients do not. You can set this option via the Remote Control feature of Domain Time II Manager (see setting options remotely), using the DOMTIME.INI file used during installation, or in the registry settings for the component). The purpose of this setting is to allow you to exlude machines you do not want to include in variance scans (large networks may include many hundreds or thousands of machines, making it problematic to include every machine in a report).

Checking this checkbox tells Manager to override the individual machine's Respond to DTCheck setting and list all Domain Time II machines it finds.

Exclude Windows TIme Agent machines selects whether machines that have only the Windows Time Agent installed are included in the Variance report.

You may also send a trigger for all machines to synchronize with their time source by clicking the Sync All Now button. This is useful to compare variance results before and after the clocks have synched. Each computer clock has built-in inaccuracies, and you can get a good idea of the scope of these by re-scanning for variances immediately after synchronizing.

Use the Ref... button to pull up a dialog window where you can specify the machine to use as the Reference Clock.



The variance scan can take some time to complete on large networks or if you have slow network connections along the way. You can reduce the amount of time the scan takes to run somewhat by limiting the search to a single subnet at a time by modifying the list of Broadcast Addresses on the Advanced Settings page.

• Audit Server
• Monitor Service
• LMCheck Utility
• NTPCheck Utility
• More information about time protocols and accuracy
• Working Across Subnets

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