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MattUebel
Asked: 2013-11-14 08:04:27 +0800 CST

Any drawbacks for using same time zone configuration in Data Centers across time zones? [duplicate]

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I operate almost entirely in one time zone. Supposing a Data Center in another time zone, it would make sense to configure the machines in that data center to use my time zone, and not local.

Are there any drawbacks to this approach?

EDIT: My assumption is that all the devices use UTC and then the time zone configuration comes into play at some points when applications are presenting time information to humans, i.e. logging.

time

2 Answers

  1. Ideally, all of your gear (servers, networking, etc.) should use UTC time. This does away with any possible ambiguity due to time zones, daylight saving time, etc.

    If that's not possible, then the next best option is to have everything on the same time zone, as you've proposed. There is nothing "wrong" with this per se, as long as each system is well-behaved with regards to the spring/fall time changes.

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  2. Yes, plenty of drawbacks, because it's wrong.

    • imagine if this server depended on having accurate timestamps, particularly if communicating with client systems a la Kerberos.

    You should be setting servers to use UTC and also telling them what time zone they're in. OS dependent, of course.

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