Time synchronization in virtual environments is a somewhat complex subject. Trying to support it across various virtual environments further complicates matters. The following is a summary of the situation as it affects JumpBox users.

VMWare Users

For users of a VMWare product the first thing to do is ensure that the tools.syncTime parameter is set to TRUE in your JumpBox.vmx file. If it is set to FALSE, then shutdown your JumpBox and change the setting to TRUE then start the JumpBox. The JumpBox time should now be kept in sync with the host system. tools.syncTime = TRUE is the intended default setting, some past JumpBox release did not have this set.

Other Virtualization Users

There are other options for non VMWare users. One can install the NTP daemon which will automatically and continuously try to sync the JumpBox time with remote network machines. This has disadvantages and limitations in virtual environments. A similar option would be to periodically run the ntpdate command which synchronizes the JumpBox time with a remote system. This may be slightly better than running the actual ntp daemon.

Why is this so hard?

The standard way that time sync should work in virtual environments is that the guest OS (the JumpBox in this case) should be synced with the host OS. This, however, requires that the virtualization platform specific guest tools be installed. At this point, this is not possible on all platforms due either to licensing or technical limitations in the guest tools provided by various virtualization platform vendors. We expect this situation to improve over time.