Time may be relative but it is relatively important for Swift! Swift uses timestamps to determine which is the most recent version of an object. It is very important for the system time on each server in the cluster to by synced as closely as possible (more so for the proxy server, but in general it is a good idea for all the servers). At Rackspace, we use NTP with a local NTP server to ensure that the system times are as close as possible. This should also be monitored to ensure that the times do not vary too much.
