The Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions ensure that the guest's system time is synchronized with the host time. There are several parameters which can be tuned. The parameters can be set for a specific VM using the following command:

$ VBoxManage guestproperty set VM-name "/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/VBoxService/property" value
                  

property is one of the following:

--timesync-interval

Specifies the interval at which to synchronize the time with the host. The default is 10000 ms (10 seconds).

--timesync-min-adjust

The minimum absolute drift value measured in milliseconds to make adjustments for. The default is 1000 ms on OS/2 and 100 ms elsewhere.

--timesync-latency-factor

The factor to multiply the time query latency with to calculate the dynamic minimum adjust time. The default is 8 times, which means as follows:

Measure the time it takes to determine the host time, the guest has to contact the VM host service which may take some time. Multiply this value by 8 and do an adjustment only if the time difference between host and guest is bigger than this value. Do not do any time adjustment otherwise.

--timesync-max-latency

The max host timer query latency to accept. The default is 250 ms.

--timesync-set-threshold

The absolute drift threshold, given as milliseconds where to start setting the time instead of trying to smoothly adjust it. The default is 20 minutes.

--timesync-set-start

Set the time when starting the time sync service.

--timesync-set-on-restore 0|1

Set the time after the VM was restored from a saved state when passing 1 as parameter. This is the default. Disable by passing 0. In the latter case, the time will be adjusted smoothly, which can take a long time.

All these parameters can be specified as command line parameters to VBoxService as well.