In today's digital world, correctly configuring the timezone on servers is crucial for the proper functioning of many applications and services. Setting the timezone not only affects the timestamping of events in log files but also the timing of operations and data storage. In this article, we will look at how to change the timezone on both Linux and Windows server operating systems.

Linux

For Linux-based systems, there are two main approaches to changing the timezone. The first is using the timedatectl command, which is available on most modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and Fedora.

1. Finding Available Timezones To display a list of all available timezones, you can use the command:

   timedatectl list-timezones
   

   You can also search for a specific timezone using grep, for example:

   timedatectl list-timezones | grep Europe
   

2. Setting the Timezone Once you find the appropriate timezone, you can set it using the command:

   sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Europe/Prague'
   ​

   Replace 'Europe/Prague' with the desired timezone.

If your distribution does not support timedatectl, you can also change the timezone manually by moving or linking the correct zone file to /etc/localtime. For example:

sudo ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Prague /etc/localtime

Properly configuring the timezone on a server is essential for the smooth operation of applications and services. Depending on your operating system, you can use different methods to change the timezone. Always ensure to restart your applications and services after changing the timezone to update the time settings.