Resilient timing infrastructure for data centres
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If you have needed time feed services or accurate, traceable time synchronisation for your hyper scale or enterprise level data centre operations, chances are you have been using GPS receivers or a purely satellite based solution. These solutions are increasingly vulnerable.
Fetching time from multiple time sources including at least one terrestrial connection is critical in hyperscale and enterprise level data centres.
When deploying complementary technologies or more resilient, terrestrial precision time solutions, even in the highly unlikely event every satellite were to fail, a time signal accurate to under 100ns would still be delivered.
Having a complete, secure, resilient time service that is not vulnerable to single-vector attacks, either terrestrial or RF/celestial based, makes the necessary foundation for an entire network infrastructure allowing reliable authentication, systems monitoring, event detection and rapid response as well as post-facto forensics and analysis.
“Timestamping precision, traceability, and accuracy are technical necessities across servers in data centres and data centre networks.”
“Resilient time synchronisation is an important innovation for data centres because it provides a reliable timing infrastructure to improve performance, while also supporting disaster recovery.”
Time synchronisation solutions for data centres
Timing infrastructure for data centres typically involve multiple timing NTP and PTP sources to ensure that accurate time synchronisation and time stamping are maintained even in the event of hardware or network failures:
Using time synchronisation solutions, such as IEEE1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) or Network Time Protocol (NTP), to distribute accurate time across their networks.
Deploying multiple sources of time, such as GPS receivers, atomic clocks, or network time servers, to ensure that accurate timing is available even if one source fails.
Implementing monitoring and alerting systems to notify administrators of any timing issues or failures, allowing them to take corrective action before they impact critical operations.
If you have needed time feed services or accurate, traceable time synchronisation for your hyper scale or enterprise level data centre operations, chances are you have been using GPS receivers or a purely satellite based solution. While these solutions has served data centre operations well, relying on just one time source without resilient failover options is no longer enough when satellites are becoming increasingly vulnerable.
Zero Trust Architecture and multiple time sources including at least one terrestrial connection are critical in hyperscale and enterprise level data centres because they provide a backup plan in the event of a failure, ensuring that critical systems and services continue to operate with minimal interruption. Without bulletproof resilience, a failure in a critical system could cause significant downtime, leading to lost productivity, revenue, and potential damage to the data centre’s reputation.
A precision time protocol architected for the unexpected
Data centres can implement failover mechanisms that automatically switch to backup timing sources or distribution systems in the event of a failure, ensuring that accurate timing is maintained without interruption.
Hoptroff Time Feed is a secure precision timing protocol to your data centre via terrestrial connections. When you connect to our Time Feed, you gain access to our Timing Hubs located in the United States, Europe and Asia. You can choose to fetch time from one, two or more. These Timing hubs are connected to three official terrestrial sources like NIST and RISE, and additional to that, they also receive time from four satellite systems; GPS, Glonass, BeiDou, and Galileo.
Precision timing for cybersecurity
Increased compute and network demand in cybersecurity, regulatory oversight, and data synchronisation needs for traditional finance, fintech, AI, power, media and telecommunications have underlined the need for secure, resilient network timing as a foundational data centre infrastructure. Cyber attacks can prevent authentication of digital certificates, time-based 2FA, inability to perform EDI or other time-based exchange protocols.
Having a complete, secure, resilient time service that is not vulnerable to single-vector attacks, either terrestrial or RF/celestial based, makes the necessary foundation for an entire network infrastructure allowing reliable authentication, systems monitoring, event detection and rapid response as well as post-facto forensics and analysis.
The innovative timing solution for enhanced data centre performance and disaster recovery
Even in the highly unlikely event every satellite were to fail and never recover, a time signal accurate to under 100ns would still be delivered.
Even in the event that all four satellite feeds were to be disrupted simultaneously by space weather or fall foul to increasingly common terrestrial jamming or spoofing, each grandmaster clock located in our Timing Hubs has a built-in holdover of 1.5ns per 24 hours. So, all the satellites could be down for weeks and the cloud timing feed would still be comfortably accurate up to 100ns.
Resilient time synchronisation is also important for disaster recovery, as accurate precision time protocol is critical for data backup and recovery processes. A resilient timing infrastructure ensures that accurate time is available even in the event of a disaster, helping to minimise data loss and downtime.
Ready to learn more?
Hoptroff Traceable Time as a Service (TTaaS®) is a range of network and software-based timing solutions that are simple, resilient, and cost-effective.
Whether you need greener solutions, the security of resilient, traceable, verifiable time or precision up to 100ns accuracy in your hyperscale, enterprise level, or microscale data centre, our obsession with accuracy will transform your business.
