Azure Event Hubs time-sync related questions

Question

Could you provide insights into how Azure Event Hubs synchronizes its time clock? Specifically, which NTP (Network Time Protocol) server does Azure Event Hubs utilize for time synchronization? Is the NTP server available publicly or privately?

Answer 1

Hi @Ahmad Farhat ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A platform and thanks for posting your query here.

• Azure Event Hubs uses the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize its time clock. The NTP server used by Azure Event Hubs is managed by Microsoft and is part of the Azure infrastructure.
• The NTP server used by Azure Event Hubs is part of the Azure Time Series Insights service, which provides a highly available and scalable time-series data store for applications and is designed to provide accurate and reliable time synchronization for Azure services and applications. This ensures that all Azure services and applications are synchronized to the same time clock, which is critical for ensuring the consistency and accuracy of data across different services and applications.
• The NTP server used by Azure Event Hubs is not available publicly, as it is part of the Azure infrastructure and is only accessible to Azure services and applications. However, you can use the Azure Time Series Insights API to retrieve time-series data from the service, which can be used to synchronize the time clock of your Azure Event Hubs applications.

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Answer 2

Hi Ahmad ,

There are several services handling the incoming device message (eg. Azure IoT Hub -> Event Hub -> Azure Function -> ADT).

Azure uses internal clocks (based on UTC) for these services.

If you want to synchronize these event hubs, you need to check each service how it synchronizes to either an Azure provide NTP or a NTP server on the local network (eg. synchronizing with GPS).

Then, you could add extra timestamps based on the times made available by the different Azure resources (like seen in the System properties of IoT Hub or Event Hub messages).

The NTP servers used by Azure services are typically internal and not publicly accessible. Azure's infrastructure is designed to handle time synchronization transparently for its users, ensuring consistency and reliability across its various services and regions.

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