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PASSEDinfrastructure / timezone_mismatch_db_app
Time Zone Mismatch Between Database and Application Servers
After a server migration, the new application servers are configured in UTC while the database remains in US/Eastern. This 4-5 hour time difference causes scheduled jobs to run at wrong times, time-based queries to return incorrect results, and audit timestamps to be inconsistent.
Pattern
UNKNOWN
Severity
CRITICAL
Confidence
95%
Remediation
Auto-Heal
Test Results
| Metric | Expected | Actual | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pattern Recognition | UNKNOWN | UNKNOWN | |
| Severity Assessment | CRITICAL | CRITICAL | |
| Incident Correlation | Yes | 17 linked | |
| Cascade Escalation | N/A | No | |
| Remediation | — | Auto-Heal — Corax resolves autonomously |
Scenario Conditions
Application servers migrated to new hardware. New servers: UTC timezone. Database server: US/Eastern timezone. 4-hour offset (EDT). Scheduled jobs running 4 hours early. Time-range queries returning wrong data. Audit log timestamps inconsistent.
Injected Error Messages (2)
application time zone misconfiguration detected — app-new-01 system timezone: UTC, database server timezone: US/Eastern (UTC-4), time-based operations producing incorrect results: nightly batch job scheduled for 02:00 local (US/Eastern) executing at 22:00 US/Eastern (02:00 UTC) — 4 hours early, 'today's orders' query returning orders from 20:00 yesterday through 20:00 today instead of midnight-to-midnight, session expiration calculations off by 4 hours, users being logged out prematurely
database query time inconsistency — queries using NOW() on application vs CURRENT_TIMESTAMP on database differ by 4 hours, WHERE clauses filtering by date range returning incorrect result sets, report generation producing wrong daily/weekly totals, audit log timestamps from application (UTC) do not match database trigger timestamps (US/Eastern), financial reconciliation failing due to transaction timestamps crossing date boundaries incorrectly, 4-hour gap causing end-of-day processing to include next-day records
Neural Engine Root Cause Analysis
The application server (app-new-01) has a timezone configuration mismatch where the system is running in UTC while the database server is configured for US/Eastern (UTC-4). This 4-hour offset is causing critical time-based operations to execute incorrectly, including batch jobs running 4 hours early, date range queries returning incorrect data sets, and session management failures. The application appears to be using system timezone for some operations and database timezone for others, creating inconsistent temporal logic throughout the system.
Remediation Plan
1. Immediately coordinate timezone synchronization between app-new-01 and database server - either set both to UTC or both to US/Eastern. 2. Restart application services to pick up new timezone configuration. 3. Verify and potentially re-run any batch jobs that executed incorrectly due to timezone mismatch. 4. Validate session expiration logic is working correctly post-fix. 5. Implement monitoring to detect future timezone configuration drift between application and database tiers.
Tested: 2026-03-30Monitors: 2 | Incidents: 2Test ID: cmnckith509vnobqepwtsltlm