Hello,
I have been struggling to freeze the date on a demo VM that I have created. I have read hundreds of articles about disabling time sync in VMware. I have already configured the .vmx control file with the following settings:
rtc.startTime = "1306990800"
tools.syncTime = "0"
time.synchronize.continue = "0"
time.synchronize.restore = "0"
time.synchronize.resume.disk = "0"
time.synchronize.shrink = "0"
time.synchronize.tools.startup = "0"
time.synchronize.tools.enable = "0"
time.synchronize.resume.host = "0"
This has the effect of completely disabling time synchronization between the VM and it's host. Also the rtc.startTime command will ensure that on a fresh startup that the date is set to June 2nd, 2011.
My problem comes from a hot snapshot reversion. I have a script set up that automatically reverts the snapshots of our demo systems each night. When the reversion first finishes, you can see the date is set to June 2, 2011 like it should. Then over the course of an hour or so, the time shifts to the future, but not due to any synchronization to the VM host. From the best I can gather, it seems to know when the last time the VM was started and as the snapshot becomes older and older, the VM adjusts the time jump accordingly. So for example, I create the hot snapshot with the date and time of the VM set to June 2nd, 2011 at 6 am. The following day, I revert the snapshot. The date stays at June 2nd for up to an hour, then skips forward in time to June 3rd, 2011. Two days later it will jump to June 4th, 2011, etc.... So the older the snapshot becomes, the further ahead the time jumps. I am assuming something is calculating the difference in time since the last successful startup and adjusting the time accordingly.
From everything I have read, this seems like an issue with Windows itself and not VMware. Does anyone know if it is indeed Windows Time Sync using Tick count to catch the system time up and if so, how I might be able to disable it?
Thanks,
Kevin Jendro