NTP time synchronization on App Engine

[Patrice Bertrand]

We have a large application hosted on Google App Engine, that is being audited by one of our clients.   The auditor is asking whether GAE servers have NTP time synchronization.   I am sure they do, but could someone point out a document that would mention this, that we could use as a reference ?

What I have found so far:

1) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18264338/google-appengine-server-instance-clock-synchronization

2) https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2015/05/Got-a-second-A-leap-second-that-is-Be-ready-for-June-30th.html

Very interesting read, but it does not exactly say that there is time synchronization.

Anything better ?

Many thanks.

[Elliott (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hello,

After looking at your question, I am not able to find public documentation you may use as a reference. I am sorry that this may not be the response you are looking for but it is something we may work on in the future. If you have specific concerns about your project, I believe that for the best way to move forward is to create a feature request, which I have done here to have this documented in the future.

Please note that even though the request will be prioritized, there is no guarantee or ETA that it may be implemented.

I hope that I have helped in this way.

[Patrice Bertrand]

Hello Elliott,

Thank you very much for your answer and for filing a request.   In the meantime, maybe you could just confirm that there is indeed NTP synchronization (if that is the case of course).

[Patrice Bertrand]

The following page, about Compute Engine instances:

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/managing-instances

says "Compute Engine instances are preconfigured to use network time protocol (NTP)."

Which would be good enough, but is not about App Engine instances.   However, I would think App Engine instances are kind of "even more pre-configured" than Compute Engine instances.