Amazon S3 : clock skew

Resolution for restore failures due to misalignment of machine time between Amanda server and Amazon

This article is for Amanda Enterprise (AE).
Issue Type: Tip 

Info Description:

Amanda Enterprise server machine time must be in sync with Amanda clients. If the date on the Amanda server is different from the Amanda client, then restore may fail due to a clock skew between the Amanda server and Amazon. You can get the following errors: 

While trying to read tapestart header: The difference between the request time
 and the current time is too large. (RequestTimeTooSkewed) (HTTP 403)
 DEVICE_ERROR

SOLUTION:

The fix is to keep the date and time of Amanda server in sync with Amazon. Amazon's clocks are within a few milliseconds of the global time standard - they use Xen, not Vmware. Configure Amanda Server and Amanda client as ntp clients.