Changes to time synchronization in Virtual Server 2005 SP1 Beta

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One of the features of Virtual Machine Additions is that we synchronize the time of the virtual machine with that of the physical computer. The reason for this feature is that it is very hard to maintain an accurate timer inside of a virtual machine that is sharing resources with other virtual machines and the host operating system. In Virtual Server 2005 SP1 Beta there are two interesting changes to our time synchronization feature:

  1. We have done some work to make time inside of the virtual machine much more reliable - even when Virtual Machine Additions are not installed.
  2. We have modified our time synchronization module to make it more accurate, and to make it respect different time zones.

The second point has been requested a couple of times now - and means that you can have the physical computer and virtual machine configured to be in seperate time zones - and not have to worry about our time synchronization messing things up.

Cheers,
Ben