ApsaraDB RDS:Change the time zone

Scenarios

You need to change the time zone of an RDS MySQL instance in the following scenarios:

• The time zone of the RDS MySQL instance in your system does not match the time zone of your business region. For example, RDS MySQL instances purchased before May 30, 2021 have a default time zone of SYSTEM, which needs to be changed to the time zone of your business region.

• You need to manually adjust the standard time used during the transition between daylight saving time and winter time in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. For example, when the United Kingdom transitions from winter time to daylight saving time, you need to change the winter time (UTC) to daylight saving time (UTC+1).

Precautions

• After the time zone parameter is modified, you need to restart the instance for the change to take effect. We recommend that you perform this operation during off-peak hours and ensure that your application has a reconnection mechanism.

• When MySQL's default_time_zone is set to SYSTEM, the following risks may exist:

  • Inconsistent time between primary and secondary nodes

    For high-performance local disk high availability instances, different time zones on the operating systems of primary and secondary nodes may cause inconsistent time zones between MySQL primary and secondary nodes, which can affect data consistency in extreme scenarios.

  • Decreased instance performance

    If your business frequently uses TIMESTAMP type fields, time zone conversion may cause lock contention issues, leading to instance performance fluctuations.

  • Inconsistent CST time zone parsing between JDBC and MySQL

    The CST time zone is ambiguous: MySQL parses it as UTC+08:00 (China Standard Time), while some JDBC versions (such as 8.0.22/23) parse it as UTC - 6 (Central Standard Time in the United States). When the operating system time zone is CST, data read from or written to MySQL by JDBC may not meet expectations. Typical case: The time zone CST has different meanings on MySQL Server and on conntector/j.

Change the time zone in the RDS console

1. Go to the Instances page. In the top navigation bar, select the region in which the RDS instance resides. Then, find the RDS instance and click the ID of the instance.

2. In the navigation pane on the left, click Parameters.

3. On the Modifiable Parameters tab, find the default_time_zone parameter, click Running Value, modify the time zone value in the dialog box that appears.

   Note

   For the meaning of the default_time_zone parameter values, see Time zone to UTC offset mapping table.

4. Click Apply Changes, select the effective time period in the dialog box that appears, and then click OK.

   Note

   If you want to cancel the modification before submitting the parameter, click Cancel Changes.

Call the API operation to change the time zone

Request example

This example calls the ModifyParameter operation to change the default_time_zone parameter to +9:00.

...
// Parameter settings for API request
        ModifyParameterRequest modifyParameterRequest = ModifyParameterRequest.builder()
                .DBInstanceId("rm-bp1l94k5sw1zxxxxx")
                .parameters("{"default_time_zone":"+9:00"}")
                .forcerestart(true)
                // Request-level configuration rewrite, can set Http request parameters, etc.
                // .requestConfiguration.create().setHttpHeaders(new HttpHeaders()))
                .build();
...

JSON format response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type:application/json

{
  "RequestId": "6D698793-FC2B-5FC1-A6DF-33EDAD1AD6AB"
}

Verify the time zone change

1. Go to the Instances page. In the top navigation bar, select the region in which the RDS instance resides. Then, find the RDS instance and click the ID of the instance.

2. In the navigation pane on the left, click Parameters.

3. On the Edit History tab, check that the modified time zone parameter value has taken effect.

   

Time zone to UTC offset mapping table

FAQ

Related API operations

Modify the default_time_zone value through the API (ModifyParameter).