Configure timezone in your OpenShift cluster

You can configure timezone on your OpenShift RHEL CoreOS nodes using following machine config:

apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
  name: worker-custom-timezone-configuration
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      config: {}
      security:
        tls: {}
      timeouts: {}
      version: 2.2.0
    networkd: {}
    passwd: {}
    storage: {}
    systemd:
      units:
      - contents: |
          [Unit]
          Description=set timezone
          After=network-online.target

          [Service]
          Type=oneshot
          ExecStart=timedatectl set-timezone Europe/London

          [Install]
          WantedBy=multi-user.target
        enabled: true
        name: custom-timezone.service
  osImageURL: "" 

Containers don't typically inherit the host time zone configuration, as container images often set their own time zone (usually UTC). It is possible to change the timezone in pods (but the OCP platform pods) using one of the following methods:

1. Set an environment variable. This sets TZ in any containers to the timezone specified.

$ oc get deployments
$ oc set env deployments/dc_name TZ=Europe/London 

2. Mount /etc/localtime to use the timezone stored in a configmap

$ oc create configmap tz-london --from-file=localtime=/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London
$ oc set volumes deployments/dc_name --add \
    --type=configmap --name=tz --configmap-name=tz-london \
    --mount-path=/etc/localtime --sub-path=localtime 

If you prefer first method are you are using Red Hat Base Universal Minimal images you'll need to reinstall tzdata package to populate /usr/share/zoneinfo

FROM registry.redhat.io/ubi8-minimal
RUN microdnf reinstall tzdata -y