Time Machine® is a patent-pending software application designed to facilitate testing and simulation of specified system dates and times without modifying or resetting the system clock.  This allows defined applications and users to run under any defined future date, past date or time zone desired while the underlying system time remains unchanged.  With this ability Time Machine proves itself as a powerful tool for performing "what-if" testing on systems resources and programs.

Time Machine provides a unique solution for user-based time morphing for Unix and Windows Servers. Time Machine can simultaneously run up to 20,000 individually defined virtual clocks at once and supports both group and user level time offsets. 

In simple cases moving the system clock forward to test applications requires additional hardware and software which will add direct costs for acquiring additional servers and licenses as the test machines can not also be used for production purposes.  This method also effects indirect costs including support staff and overhead, network issues, reliability, etc.. that come from running a larger environment.  With Time Machine running processes can be virtual time-segregated between testing and production applications allowing a single machine to function as many.

In a network environment where secure logins are used, such as with Microsoft's Active Directory, Novell's eDirectory or Sun Microsystems' Sun One directory services, users login in with a time-based ticketing system through Kerberos, a network authentication protocol.  One of the procedures employed by the Kerberos process to maintain network security is the hard requirement that any machine that participates in the network must have it's system clock synchronized to be no more than five minutes different than the Domain Controller's time.  This clock synchronization is necessary to prevent an attacker from using an old authenticator to masquerade as a valid user.  The exclusion feature in Time Machine overcomes this issue by allowing the Kerberos login's dynamically linked libraries and executables to run under the valid system time so that all access tokens are requested with the correct time.  This process combined with Time Machine's file date-stamping using real-time variables ensures that all backups function correctly, file replication services run without disruption and all machines running Time Machine can freely participate in the secure network.

ASPs and corporate data centers that support users across multiple time zones can also benefit from this versatile software package.  Rather than implementing the typical approach, one server per time zone, Time Machine provides a cost-effective, single-server solution. Easy to implement, a single copy of Time Machine installed on a server supports unlimited time zones.  With Time Machine, servers can now provide remote clients/users with "local time" as required for legal, accounting, and other sensitive and/or critical time and date applications: Terminal Server Programs run in user time, rather than system time.

Solution-Soft invites you to test Time Machine today. Free evaluations are available through our sales group.

Time Machine is available for MPE, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX and Windows NT platforms.

Michael Morrison - Storage Management and Date & Time Testing