vMA - Time Zone configuration

Problem

There is a little used vMA server in our environment which needed to be used - when I got on it I found that the timezone was set to PDT.....

Since the work I wanted to do was to do with Syslog and AD having the right time would be critical!

Solution

I found a useful article after a bit of Googling and reading of the vSphere Management Assistant Guide which helped me: http://xtravirt.com/using-vma-your-esxi-syslog-server the article was written by Simon Long and obviously he deserves all the credit and not me!!

If the article ever disappears I'll just go over the bits I used:

1. Adding of the sites NTP server(s).
sudo nano /etc/ntp.conf

(I added the entries under #use the public servers from the...... )

2. Remove the local time file
sudo rm /etc/localtime

3. Replace the local time file with the correct one for your timezone
sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC /etc/localtime

4. Turn the NTP daemon on
sudo /sbin/chkconfig ntpd on

5. Restart the ntpd service to pick up the "new time"
sudo /sbin/service ntpd restart

6. Checking that your time server configuration has taken
sudo ntpq -p

7. Changing the keyboard from US to EN
sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/keyboard

Change the KEYTABLES entry from "us" to "en"

NOTE: I need to check whether UTC is good enough for our needs and if not I'll be amending the blog with what I actually used - Again, thanks to Simon for such a great article :-)