How to reconfigure iptables & NTP on Exadata storage cells ?

I'm preparing to apply the last patches to an Exadata Database Machine and keep running into network configuration issues. The last one is the NTP configuration on the storage cells. The Oracle engineer who configured it had unfortunately different ideas on what ip address to use than the network admins... I'm now trying to find out how to change this the Exadata way - perhaps I can just edit the ntp.conf file? Won't a central tool such as dcli be affected?

A compounding factor is that in the storage cells there is an iptables firewall configured, which has to be modified as well. I've checked the normal configuration files for the OEL iptables (/etc/sysconfig/iptables), but it doesn't exist. Yet the firewall is loaded - twice! Iptables -L shows the entire list two times, one below the other. Makes me think that there is another mechanism calling iptables at boot, but what? How is it configured?

Anyone has any leads or links to documentation? I've already got the fantastic book by Kerry Osborne, Randy Johnson and Tanel Poder, and the Exadata Machine Owner's Guide, but those don't get me much further on this either... :(

Thanks,
Tony

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