DATA CENTERS & IT NETWORKS INDUSTRY
PreciseSync-GMC-300 series locks every hypervisor host, core switch, firewall, storage controller and SIEM collector in your data center to a single stratum-1 UTC reference. Every log line, every distributed trace and every audit record draws from the same clock, so a fault in one part of the stack tells the same story as a security alert in another.
<100 ns
PTP GRANDMASTER ACCURACY TO UTC
<1 µs
NTP TIMESTAMP ACCURACY AT SERVER
5 GNSS
CONSTELLATIONS: GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BEIDOU, NAVIC
THE HIDDEN BACKBONE OF EVERY LOG FILE
A modern data center is not one monolithic system running one clock. It is hundreds of physical servers, virtual machines, bare-metal hypervisors, top-of-rack switches, load balancers, firewalls and storage arrays, each writing timestamps into logs and traces using its own internal sense of time.
Without a shared reference, those clocks drift quietly and independently. A firewall records an event at 14:02:11.341, the application server logs the same request at 14:02:11.794, and the SIEM correlates them as two separate incidents. When something goes wrong, the first hour of response time disappears into reconciling timestamps instead of acting on the problem.
Sertel designed the PreciseSync-GMC-300 series precisely for environments like this. A satellite-locked stratum-1 reference feeds PTP IEEE 1588v2, IRIG-B, SNMP monitoring and syslog, the protocols your infrastructure already understands, from a single rack appliance or DIN-rail unit. Connect the antenna, assign an IP, and the entire network has a common, auditable time domain within minutes.
The problem
These are the failure patterns Sertel engineers encounter most frequently when auditing enterprise data centers, financial trading infrastructure and co-location facilities across India and the Middle East.
Broken SIEM Log Correlation Across the Stack
When firewalls, servers and application containers each keep a slightly different clock, a single security event appears as three disconnected log entries. Investigations stall while analysts manually re-sequence events instead of responding. Root-cause timelines that should take minutes can take entire shifts.
Authentication Failures Caused by Clock Skew
Active Directory rejects Kerberos tickets once a client clock drifts more than five minutes from the domain controller. Hypervisor guests, containerised workloads and newly provisioned virtual machines are especially prone to drift, producing hard-to-reproduce login failures that look like application bugs but are actually clock problems.
Compliance Timestamp Gaps in Audit Evidence
Frameworks including ISO/IEC 27001, PCI DSS and MiFID II RTS 25 require event and transaction records to carry traceable, UTC-aligned timestamps. Auditors reject evidence from systems whose clock source and accuracy cannot be demonstrated, turning a straightforward compliance review into a significant remediation project.
Security Exposure From Public NTP Dependency
Pointing production servers at internet NTP pools means opening outbound paths through a security-segmented network and trusting a time source nobody on the security team controls, audits or can isolate during an incident. It is a common finding in enterprise penetration tests and ISO audits across the region.
The Sertel solution
The GMC-300 series was designed for exactly the challenge a data center presents: a mix of legacy IRIG-B-based equipment, modern PTP-aware switching fabric and a SIEM platform that all need to trust the same clock. Choose the 1U rack unit, the fully-redundant 3U enterprise unit, or the compact DIN-rail variant, and your entire OT and IT network operates on one auditable time domain.
184-Channel Multi-GNSS Receiver
Tracks GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou and NavIC across L1, L2 and L5 bands simultaneously. A 184-channel parallel-tracking architecture means fast satellite acquisition and a resilient fix even through antenna cable runs well over 100 metres from the roof to the server room floor.
PTP IEEE 1588v2 Grandmaster
Delivers sub-100-nanosecond PTP timestamps with full support for C37.238 Power Profile, ITU-T G.8265.1 and G.8275.1 telecom profiles, and both one-step and two-step delay mechanisms. Works with P2P and E2E delay measurement to match whatever PTP profile your switching fabric already runs.
IRIG-B AM and TTL Outputs
AM IRIG-B (B125) at 50 ohm impedance and TTL PWM IRIG-B outputs serve legacy protection relays, oscillography recorders and older IEDs that expect a coaxial time reference, so no existing equipment needs to be upgraded when you introduce a GPS reference clock.
SNMP v1/v2c/v3 and Syslog Monitoring
Independently configurable SNMP versions, authenticated SNMPv3 traps, and RFC-3164 and RFC-5424 syslog output feed straight into existing NOC dashboards and SIEM platforms, so GNSS lock status, holdover events and alarm relay changes appear alongside every other piece of infrastructure telemetry.
OCXO Holdover Stability
A high-precision, oven-controlled crystal oscillator holds 10 PPB frequency stability during a GNSS outage, antenna fault or planned maintenance window. NTP and PTP outputs remain stable throughout the holdover period rather than drifting with the loss of signal, keeping the entire network on schedule.
Full Redundancy Option (GMC-300-R)
The R variant builds redundancy at every critical system level: dual GPS receivers, dual master clocks, a comparator unit and dual power supplies. For mission-critical co-location, trading infrastructure and financial settlement networks where even a momentary timing gap is unacceptable, this is the specification to deploy.
Product range
Whether you are fitting a compact primary time server into a space-constrained rack, deploying a fully-redundant grandmaster for a mission-critical production floor, or mounting a panel-level PTP source inside an edge cabinet, the GMC-300 series covers the installation.
| Feature | PreciseSync-GMC-300 · 1U Rack Compact | PreciseSync-GMC-300-R · Redundant 3U | PreciseSync-GMC-300-D · DIN Rail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form Factor | 1U 19" Rack | 3U / 2U 19" Rack | DIN Rail |
| Timing Accuracy | 15 ns with GNSS lock | 15 ns with GNSS lock | 15 ns with GNSS lock |
| PTP Timestamp | < 100 ns | < 100 ns | < 100 ns |
| GNSS Constellations | GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, NavIC | GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, NavIC | GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, NavIC, L5 |
| Channels | 184-channel parallel | 184-channel parallel | 184-channel receiver, 24-channel antenna |
| Oscillator | OCXO 10 PPB | OCXO 10 PPB | OCXO 10 PPB |
| Redundancy | Single | Full (GPS, clock, PSU, comparator) | Single |
| PTP IEEE 1588v2 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| IRIG-B Output | AM/TTL (BNC) | AM/TTL | AM output |
| Power Supply | 90-260 V AC/DC, dual option | 2x redundant 90-260 V AC/DC | 90-260 V AC/DC, dual supply A and B |
| Management | HTTPS/SSL + Sertel TMS suite | HTTPS/SSL + Sertel TMS suite | HTTPS/SSL + Sertel TMS suite |
| Best For | Space-efficient single-unit data centers | Mission-critical, zero-downtime networks | Panel & cabinet edge installations |
All models include the Sertel T-GPA-014-S15 active GNSS antenna kit with cable, lightning arrestor and mounting bracket.
Applications
Hyperscale and Co-location Data Centers
Provides a single audit-ready time domain for shared facilities where multiple tenants, billing systems and SLA reports all depend on the same trusted UTC clock. Supports both PTP for new switching fabric and NTP for legacy server pools from one appliance.
Enterprise IT and Active Directory Networks
Keeps domain controllers, file servers and endpoint images inside the Kerberos five-minute clock-skew tolerance, eliminating a quiet but recurring source of authentication failures. A single PreciseSync GMC-300 on the management LAN is usually sufficient for a full campus network.
Financial Trading and Exchange Co-location
Supplies the sub-100-nanosecond PTP timestamps that order matching engines, market data feeds, trade surveillance systems and post-trade reporting platforms need to meet MiFID II RTS 25 and SEBI timestamp accuracy requirements.
Cloud, Virtualisation and Container Platforms
Aligns hypervisor hosts, Kubernetes nodes and service mesh sidecars to the same UTC reference so distributed traces and inter-service request logs reconstruct cleanly across dozens of microservices, removing the guesswork from latency debugging and SLO reporting.
Security Operations and SIEM Platforms
Gives the SIEM a single trusted time source to correlate firewall, endpoint and application logs during a security incident or a compliance review, instead of spending the first hour of response time reconciling timestamps from five different systems.
Disaster Recovery and Multi-Site Replication
Synchronises primary and DR sites to the same UTC reference so replication logs, failover event records and recovery point timestamps stay consistent across locations, making planned and unplanned failover testing clean and auditable.
From our commissioning logs
During a compliance audit at a Tier III co-location facility serving a cluster of banking and broking clients, the security team found that a single suspicious-access investigation had taken three engineers most of a working day. The core switch, the identity server and the application tier each logged the same event with clocks that disagreed by up to four minutes. The timeline was genuinely ambiguous; nobody could agree on the sequence of events with confidence.
The facility management team replaced a collection of client-side internet NTP configurations with a pair of PreciseSync-GMC-300-R units deployed in hot-standby configuration on the management network. IRIG-B was distributed to the older security appliances via fibre converters, and PTP IEEE 1588v2 was enabled for the newer switching fabric and virtualisation hosts. Within forty-five minutes, every device on the audited network segment was reading time within 100 nanoseconds of UTC.
The next access review, conducted three weeks later, took just under ninety minutes from first query to final report sign-off. Every log entry, from every system, told the same story in the same sequence. The practical value of a disciplined, shared clock reference is not a theoretical security improvement. It is hours of incident response time returned to the team every time something goes wrong.
Relevant products
Stratum-1 GNSS Time Server
A compact 19 inch rack PTP time server with OCXO holdover and 15 ns timing accuracy under GNSS lock. One unit feeds PTP Ethernet, IRIG-B, 1PPS and any number of slave clocks.
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Redundant Stratum 1 GNSS Time Server
Redundant GNSS receivers, master clocks, comparator and dual power supplies in a 2U or 3U Eurocard chassis. Built for substations and control rooms where time must never stop.
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Stratum-1 PTP Time Server, DIN Rail
A panel-mounted PTP time server that fits inside control cabinets without rack space. Delivers IRIG-B (AM) and PTP Ethernet from a multi-constellation GNSS receiver with OCXO holdover.
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Digital Display
A six-digit wall clock that pulls time straight from your NTP server over the existing Ethernet network. The everyday choice for offices, control rooms and production halls that already run a time server.
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Digital Display
Shows the current date in large LED digits, synchronised to the same NTP source as your clocks. Pair it with a time display at shift boards, gate houses and reception areas so logs and records never disagree.
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Digital Display
A compact three-character display that names the day of the week, driven by NTP. Useful on shop floors and in maintenance bays where weekly schedules and rotating shifts decide who works where.
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Digital Display
A 28-character, multi-row LED board that combines time and date with live plant values such as frequency, MW output or ambient temperature. Reads data over Ethernet, OPC or 4-20 mA and supports scrolling and flashing messages.
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Digital Display
Our largest standard time display, built for turbine halls, warehouses and assembly floors where staff read the clock from a distance. Accepts NTP, PTP, IRIG-B, RS-232, RS-485 or differential pulse input in a wall-mount housing.
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Digital Display
A small-character NTP clock sized for panel fronts, server racks and operator consoles. It brings the same synchronised time to close-range viewing points where a wall display would be oversized.
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Digital Display
A slave clock for sites that distribute time from a master clock rather than over the LAN. IRIG-B or differential pulse input on a multi-drop bus drives up to 300 displays within a 1 km radius, and one failed unit never stops the rest.
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MULTI-FREQUENCY · MULTI-CONSTELLATION GNSS
Multi-constellation GNSS reception for positioning, navigation and timing, with interfaces and configurations matched to the application.
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LoRa RF Industrial Transceiver
An industrial LoRa RF gateway linking remote monitoring points to a Modbus-ready network, with local data logging.
Know moreFAQ
Talk to a Sertel field engineer about specifying the PreciseSync-GMC-300 series for your data center, campus network or co-location environment. We ship across India and the Middle East, configure on-site, and support every deployment through its full operational life.
