Setting the time zone for a single application server

We can ensure that your application components use the correct time zone. How you do this varies by the operating system on which WAS is installed and, in some cases, by the scope required.

 

Before you begin

If you set your application servers to a North America time zone, review the Technote Changes to Daylight Saving Time will affect IBM WAS and its associated Operating Systems and make sure that you have applied the service updates required to support the changes the United States and Canada are making to the start and stop dates for Daylight Savings Time.

Remember that time zone IDs should include an offset and, in almost all cases, a daylight saving time zone name for consistent results. For example, you might specify EST5EDT for Eastern Standard Time, Daylight Savings Time.

If you specify the East African Time Zone (EAT) for your time zone setting, the HP-UX operating system Java virtual machine (JVM) uses Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Therefore, log file time stamps are based on GMT instead of EAT. The situation might also causes problems in server federation if you attempt to synchronize with servers that are running on an operating system whose JVM correctly handles the EAT.

If you need to use East African Time Zone as the time zone setting for a specific function, instead of using the following procedure, add the -Duser.timezone=EAT parameter to the appropriate Java command. For example, to have an application server use EAT as its time zone setting, add the -Duser.timezone=EAT parameter to the startServer command.

 

About this task

In some application environments, it is important that application server components use the same time zone.

To change the time zone setting for a single application server:

 

Procedure

  1. In the administrative console click Application Servers > servername .

  2. Under Server Infrastructure, click Java and Process Management > Process Definition > Java Virtual Machine > .

  3. Either click Custom Properties, or enter -Duser.timezone=time_zone_ID in the Generic JVM arguments field.

  4. If you clicked Custom Properties in the previous step, specify user.timezone in the Name field and the appropriate time zone ID in the Value field.

    We can also enter a description of this custom property and the setting you specified.

  5. Click Apply.

  6. Save your work.

    Make sure Synchronize changes with Nodes is selected, and click Save.

 

Results

All of the components of this application server use the time zone specified for the custom property.

 

What to do next

Stop and restart this application server. You must restart the server for the change to take effect.

 

See also


Time zone IDs that can be specified for the user.timezone property
Related tasks
Configuring WebSphere variables Manage application servers