Installing the service

Monitor Settings

The Monitor Service Control Panel Applet

Monitor should check the network Every Thirty Minutes Once Each Hour Every Two Hours Every Six Hours Every Twelve Hours Once Each Day
This drop-down list allows you to set how often the Monitor will run its scan of the network.

Send email summaries Every Day Mondays Tuesdays Wednesdays Thursdays Fridays Saturdays Sundays First and Fifteenth
When this checkbox is checked, Monitor will send a report to your designated email recipient(s) of the time variances with the amount of detail that you specify using the radio buttons:


Include all detail records
Include only error details
No detail records

Save scan details to disk   Sorted by IP   Variance
When this box is checked, Monitor saves the results of variance scans to individual files on the disk so that you may easily keep a running history. The entries in the reports will be sorted in the manner you indicate. See the Results section below for more information.

Email Setup


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In order for variance reports and alerts to be sent by email, you need to fill out the fields in the Email Setup screen.

The Email Setup dialog

Server Information

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SMTP Host:
Enter the DNS name or IP address of the SMTP server you wish to use.

SMTP Backup Host:
Enter the DNS name or IP address of an SMTP server that you wish Monitor to use if the primary SMTP server is not available.

Addressing Information

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FROM Email Address:
This is the address that will be used as the FROM address. This can be any address your SMTP server is able to treat as a valid incoming address.

TO Email Addresses
These are the addresses you wish Monitor to send email to. These must be valid email addresses.

HTML Format
When this box is checked, Monitor will send its reports and alerts in HTML format for easier reading. Leave this box unchecked if you wish to receive your notices in plain ASCII text.

Dial-Up Networking Settings
Use these radio buttons to tell Monitor whether the monitoring machine is connecting over a dial-up networking connection.


Wait for Dial-Up connection to send mail
Use this setting if this machine only connects occasionally to the network using a dial-up networking connection.

Send mail at any time (assumes LAN)
If your monitoring machine is connected to a LAN with a full-time connection, use this setting.

Alert Definitions

The default values are suggestions only. The acceptable range of variance depends on your individual network and sync requirements. Use the Variance Report feature of Manager to get a good feel for the range of normal variance on your network, and then choose settings that will only flag time sync problems that you consider serious enough for intervention.

If Master and Slaves disagree by or more milliseconds
The synchronization between the master and its slaves is critical to overall time accuracy on the network. It is a good idea to specify a closer tolerance for these systems than for others on the network.

If any one machine is off by or more milliseconds
This specifies the outside limit of variance for any single machine, regardless of its role (server or client).

If the average system variance is or more milliseconds

Alert Actions

Record details in Event Viewer Log
Checking this box instructs Monitor to put alert information in the Windows Application Event logs.

Display message to logged-in user
When this box is checked, Monitor will pop up the control panel applet with a warning message to the user logged on to the machine running Monitor.

Send detail report in email
When this box is checked, Monitor will send error messages and details to the email recipients specified above.

Status

The Status indicator is a graphical representation of the state of time synchronization on your network. Under normal circumstances, this indicator will be green. If a time sync problem is detected, the indicator will change to match the severity of the problem.

Results
Click this button to pull up the the graphical Variance Report and Historical Records screen.

The Domain Time II Monitor Service Variance Report Screen

Reports written to disk are displayed in the Variance Reports window. You can double-click on any report to pull it up (or highlight it and click the View Details button). This allows you to easily keep and review historical records of your variance reports.

Note: You must have the Save scan details to disk option checked in the Monitor Settings section of the Control Panel applet for the historical reports to be kept and displayed here.

Notice that summary details from each variance report are displayed in the Variances and Clock Comparisons sections of the window when you highlight a historical record. You can view the complete details of the historical record by clicking the View Details button.

Graphs
Clicking this button will bring up a graphical display of your collected data. You can select from a wide variety of graph types that let you see at a glance how well your network is being synchronized. You can also adjust the scale of the graph to your desired level of accuracy (from milliseconds to minutes).

Advanced

The Domain Time II Monitor Service Advanced Settings Screen

Reference Clock

Automatic - find a Domain Time II server and use it
When this button is selected, Monitor will use the first Domain Time II Master Server it locates as the reference clock. If no master can be located, Monitor will try for a slave, then an independent server, and finally (if no Domain Time II servers can be located), it will use its own time.

This Machine - use this machine's time as the reference
When selected, Monitor will not search for a Domain Time II server; it will use it's own time as the reference.

Pick a specific machine


Specify a server that uses the Domain Time II protocol
Enter the DNS name or IP address of a Domain Time II Server you want to use as the reference.

Specify a server that uses the NTP/SNTP protocol
Use this selection if you want to use an NTP time source as your reference (such as a external public Internet time server, a GPS network clock, or any other machine that provides the time via NTP). Enter the DNS name or IP address in the box.

Important: Choosing a stable and reliable reference clock is critical to provide useful variance data on your network. If the reference clock's time varies greatly, your network will show large variances from sample to sample even if your network is actually well-synchronized. This graph shows the disastrous results of changing from a stable local GPS clock as a reference to an unstable internet source (time.windows.com):

See many other interesting graphs on the Graphs page.

Broadcast Address List

Using the same list as Manager is usually the best choice since you can use Manager to see which machines are answering broadcasts and showing up in reports. However, if you wish to be sure that Monitor always contacts the same subnets regardless of what changes are made to Manager, then you'll want to fill in this list.