Unable to change time and timezone in ESXi server.

[mxn2nv]

Greetings,

Need instructions on how to change the time and timezone on a ESXi server. I have tried many commands from different posting with no luck. My sever is off by 8 hours.

Please help.

C

[ShahidSheikh]

You can't change the time zone.

You can change the time from the VI client. Don't recommend changing it while VMs are running.

Setting up NTP servers for time sync is a good idea.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Community forums. Just to add to the previous post, ESXi runs in UTC. When you connect to it with the VI client, it will use the local time zone on your PC to display the time of various events.

[mxn2nv]

Ok, the vi client time is fine, but some of my vm's are 8 hours ahead. I changed the time on the vm's to reflect the time with the vi client. They run fine for a couple of days but then it switches the time +8??

Help..

Thanks,

[mxn2nv]

Ok, the vi client time is fine, but some of my vm's are 8 hours ahead. I changed the time on the vm's to reflect the time with the vi client. They run fine for a couple of days but then it switches the time +8??

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

What time is diplayed if you go to Configuration \ Time Configuration in the VI client? Is the host set to sync time with an NTP source?

[ShahidSheikh]

The operating systems (like NT 4.0) that insist on having the hardware clock set to the local time zone will have this problem. Unfortunately, you cannot sync the time of those VMs to the host. If you do then your VM will be fast by the same number of hours as you are behind UTC.

You can get around this by configuring the VM to sync with a different time source like directly to a time server (NTP, Windows, etc.)

I'm hoping in future versions there will be an option to select which time zone the hardware clock of the VM is set to. Or an option to add an offset to the time sync option.

[sorina]

Hi

when I set time from vsphere(5.0) without any NTP server  , any change in my esxi host (5.0) does not accoure.(when I I go to ESXI host with Putty and write "date" command ,time is diffrent from what I configure)

my reason for this change:

The vCenter Operations Manager vApp synchronizes time with the ESX host time. and I dont want UTC.

!!

[Haocen]

Changing time can be easy as you can use vSphere client to sync local time with ESXi server, or specific an NTP server for it to sync with.

But it turns out to be very sad that ESXi doesn't have the ability to change the time zone, it can only use UTC time. How very inconvenient.

VMware KB: Adjusting ESX host Time Zone