Case Study: Facebook achieves sub-millisecond datacenter time synchronization with Spirent Sentinel

Facebook - Customer Case Study

Facebook, a global social media company, needed to maintain highly accurate, sub-millisecond time synchronization across its vast network of datacenters to support critical functions like databases and logging. Their existing NTPd system only provided accuracy within ±10ms, and their attempts to test a more precise solution, Chrony, were hampered by an inability to properly measure the actual time error at a large scale. Spirent Communications worked with them to address this challenge.

Spirent provided its Sentinel Synchronization Tester, a solution featuring an internal Rubidium clock, support for IPv6 NTP testing, and robust security features. The instrument enabled Facebook to continuously monitor timing accuracy remotely and verify performance across its entire network. As a result, Facebook was able to confirm a massive improvement in its timing synchronization accuracy from 10 milliseconds down to 100 microseconds, a key enabler for their infrastructure's performance and reliability.

Facebook

Oleg Obleukhov

Production Engineer