Working with Windows Images FAQ

Q. Why is the timezone set incorrectly on my Windows VM when I boot?

A. The Windows VM assumes that the hardware clock is set to the local timezone, which causes the time to be set incorrectly at boot. The timezone cannot be changed on the hypervisor due to our support and security compliance policies and OpenStack does not provide a mechanism to set the hardware clock timezone for individual VMs.

We have tested a method to cause Windows to treat the hardware clock as UTC time, which corrects this issue. Please run the following command to set a registry value that will cause Windows to behave appropriately:

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation /v RealTimeIsUniversal /d 1 /t REG_DWORD

Confirm that the value has been added with this command:

reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation

You should see a line that says this:

RealTimeIsUniversal REG_DWORD 0x1.

Additionally, we have opened a defect to ask our image developers to include this registry setting in a future version of the Windows images we provide.

Q. To ensure the timezone is set correctly, what else should I do?

A. Set --property os_type="windows" with glance image-update when dealing with Windows images on your IBM Bluemix Private Cloud. Also, specify set_timezone: ExampleTime/Zone in your #cloud-config user-data.