Nova and Horizon: UTC Timestamp Translation Across Regional Time Zones

Regional Time Synchronization

OpenStack services standardize on UTC for internal database storage and API timestamps to maintain consistency across distributed regions. However, the translation of these UTC timestamps into local user time zones often occurs at the client-side application layer rather than within the core API.

Interoperability Constraints

In multi-region deployments, the Nova compute service relies on the host OS clock for local event logging. If the Horizon dashboard is used to monitor instances across regions with differing system time zones, there is uncertainty regarding how the UI handles the conversion of the API's UTC output to the specific regional context of the instance.

This creates a potential discrepancy between the centralized API timestamp and the local host's event logs during audit trails.

• Does the Horizon dashboard provide a mechanism to toggle between UTC and the specific regional time zone of the Nova compute node?
• Is the date conversion logic standardized across OpenStack distributions, or is it dependent on the browser's local time zone settings?