Categories
Amazon Web Services Linux Rackspace

Is your Linux Timezone Reverting to UTC After Rebooting?

Being based in Perth (GMT +8), I have always thought it made sense to have our servers running in the Australia/Perth timezone (rather than UTC).

This makes sense for many reasons, mostly that when we set up a cron job, we can use local time (rather than UTC), which makes life very easy.

Recently our Rackspace Cloud servers and Amazon EC2 instances (both running CentOS) were rebooted after updating the glibc package, which caused each server’s timezone to revert back to UTC.

To set the timezone, I had always created a /etc/localtime symbolic link pointing to /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Perth, however it turns out that there is one other thing that has to be done in order to make the timezone setting be persistent across updates and reboots.

Luckily, the solution was hidden away in the AWS user guide.

In addition to the symlink, it is also necessary to edit the /etc/sysconfig/clock file, and change it to your local timezone ( in my case ZONE="Australia/Perth" ).

After making both of these changes, be sure to reboot your server, and then use the date command to check that your server is still in your local timezone (rather than UTC).

Categories
News Rackspace

Rackspace Cloud now available in Sydney, Australia

In August 2012, Rackspace announced that they were working on launching an Australian datacentre for their cloud offerings.

Today that dream is a reality, with the official announcement of their new Sydney-based datacentre:

Rackspace now have datacentres in 9 locations, including Australia, the UK, Hong Kong, and the USA.

Map of Rackspace Datacentre Locations
Image Credit: Rackspace Australia

I just logged into the Rackspace Control Panel, and here’s the proof:

Rackspace Control Panel - Add New Server
Rackspace Control Panel – Add New Server

I’ve invested many hours in AWS’ offerings, so I’m not planning on switching to Rackspace Cloud any time soon, but it is great to see more competition in the Australian-based cloud industry.

(AWS launched their Sydney datacentre in November 2012).

Categories
Amazon Web Services Cloud News Rackspace

Amazon Web Services now in Australia (Sydney)

Big news this morning:

Amazon Web Services has just launched an AWS region in Sydney, Australia!

The new Asia Pacific (Sydney) region supports almost all of AWS’ services including EC2, RDS, S3 and many more.

After launching an Australian Edge Location in June 2012 for Route 53 and CloudFront, I (along with many other Australian developers) have been waiting for AWS to launch a fully-fledged Australian region.

Whilst there are already some Australian-specific Cloud Computing offerings, this is a big day for us now that the AWS juggernaut has launched here.

Rackspace (another large cloud computing provider) has previously committed to launching a Syndey-based datacentre in 2012, however we are yet to see that launch.

Overall, I think that more competition in the Australian cloud industry can only be a good thing for us. It’s likely to help drive down the high costs of Australia’s high bandwidth/data.

Onwards and upwards!

Categories
Cloud Rackspace

Rackspace to Launch Sydney Datacentre in 2012

Rackspace have just announced a Sydney-based datacentre, to be live by the end of 2012:

I’m looking forward to seeing increased competition in the Australian Cloud Hosting arena. Your turn now, AWS? 🙂

Update 22/8/2012 3:10pm: Rackspace have published details on the Sydney datacentre here.

Update 17/6/2013: Rackspace’s Sydney Datacentre is now online.