vCenter 5.5 Cannot change timezone

[johnmac80]

Have recently upgraded my environment to 5.5 - everything has went rather well, until I looked in the vSphere Web Client which shows a completely empty inventory.  vSphere Client is fine.

As I said the upgrade went without a hitch, talking to a colleague he asked me to check the time settings for the hosts and also vcenter.  Hosts were fine.  vCenter appliance however is stuck on UTC.  (I am GMT) so there is 1 hour's difference, thought i'd cracked it but I cannot for some reason change the timezone in the 5.5 appliance.  Hitting enter on the change timezone screen does nothing, logged in via SSH to edit the file which I did, it's still showing as UTC.

Anyone else came across this little foible?

[admin]

In VCenter 5.5 the support to change the timezone from the console and the Virtaul Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) has been removed. Currently the timezone by default is UTC.

Please find the KB for this VMware KB: Setting the time zone in the vCenter Server Appliance

Thanks,

Avakash

[johnmac80]

thanks for that, is there any reason why it was removed?  Is there any plans to put it back in place?  How can I change the setting?

Regards,

John

[johnmac80 · Accepted solution]

It's OK i fixed it with this KB - VMware KB: Adjusting ESX host Time Zone correct time zone is GB.

[hhristov]

Hi John,

We don't support timezone configuration in vCenter Server Appliance like we also don't support it in ESXi, as noted in the KB you referenced. There are no plans to add it back.

Regards,

Hristo

[mhammett]

So the answer is...  because we said so? I haven't heard that since my parents told me that as a kid.

Okay, so don't change the timezone on a host or on the vCenter appliance...  why?

[mhammett]

Why?

[mhammett]

Like so many other things, I suppose it is so VMWare can make our lives more difficult.

[AngelPrieto]

Hello,

you can change timezone by setting it in linux directly.

Log in vcenter server by console or SSH and remove the simbolic link /etc/localtime (rm /etc/localtime) then create a new link like "ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/YOURZONEINFOR/CITY /etc/localtime"

Good luck.