-In very rare cases, CockroachDB can momentarily run with a stale clock. This can happen when using vMotion, which can suspend a VM running CockroachDB, migrate it to different hardware, and resume it. This will cause CockroachDB to be out of sync for a short period before it jumps to the correct time. During this window, it would be possible for a client to read stale data and write data derived from stale reads. By enabling the `server.clock.forward_jump_check_enabled` [cluster setting]({% link {{ page.version.version }}/cluster-settings.md %}), you can be alerted when the CockroachDB clock jumps forward, indicating it had been running with a stale clock. To protect against this on vMotion, however, use the [`--clock-device`](cockroach-start.html#general) flag to specify a [PTP hardware clock](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/driver-api/ptp.html) for CockroachDB to use when querying the current time. When doing so, you should not enable `server.clock.forward_jump_check_enabled` because forward jumps will be expected and harmless. For more information on how `--clock-device` interacts with vMotion, see [this blog post](https://web.archive.org/web/20210420062611/https://core.vmware.com/blog/cockroachdb-vmotion-support-vsphere-7-using-precise-timekeeping).
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