follow the code @manicasteroid

Watch your time zones on Windows Azure!

Posted on June 8, 2009

So I deployed some code to Windows Azure and was initially surprised that it was running differently than what I had observed locally.

Turns out and once you think of it its a no brainer … my code was running in a different time zone. All my other services were in EST but this was PST. The solution in my case is to keep everything as GMT and then do any necessary calculations :)

You might wonder if this is documented anywhere. To be honest, I have no idea since most of the documentation has been very poor. The website for Azure has circular links that will drive you nuts and the local SDK docs are just focused more on the API and are too incomplete as well.

Update: Since posting I’ve been told all servers will be and are currently in GMT time. Cool!

Be Sociable, Share!

    Tags:

    • http://smarx.com Steve Marx

      The servers in Windows Azure should be running in GMT. Did you see something different?

    • typemismatch

      Steve, you are totally correct. I went back and checked my code – it wasn’t a PST/EST delta but a GMT/EST one.

      Was that documented somewhere that I can reference?

    • http://smarx.com Steve Marx

      I don’t know if it’s anywhere in the documentation, but we blogged a while back on blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure when we made the move to GMT (it actually was PST before that).


    Categories