New Zealand EPA employs TimeShiftX® in Carbon Emissions Redevelopment Project

Business Needs

Mission-critical date logic required comprehensive testing

New Zealand EPA was upgrading their existing carbon emissions management system (NZEUR) to a new web-based application to significantly improve the user experience and usage. The New Zealand IT Consultant developed the new web-based application inside the government’s own cloud infrastructure.

The purpose of the NZEUR system is to comply with the UN Kyoto Protocol (an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to fight global warming). This system is used by organizations and individuals to record, track, manage, and report on carbon units, emissions, and removals. It manages functionality such as:

• Account Management
• Financial Reporting
• Carbon Unit Management
• Compliancy Status
• Account Monitoring
• Carbon Transfers

The Challenge

Clock changes met Active Directory & operational roadblocks

The environment is load balanced and contained within Active Directory. The domain authentication protocol contains a security restriction where a time skew of 5 minutes or more between any servers kicks them off the domain and blocks time travel. Key hurdles included:

• Active Directory in government cloud blocking time travel due to 5-minute clock skew limits
• Load-balanced, distributed cloud environment requiring synchronized time across all nodes
• Fast-approaching go-live date requiring immediate testing capabilities
• Strict cloud security and stability policies preventing OS modifications

Upon entering the testing phase of the project, the team was completely blocked from time travelling due to Active Directory running inside the government’s cloud, and thus needed a solution that was both Active Directory and cloud compatible.

The TimeShiftX Solution

Virtual time simulation without altering host operating clocks

The development team needed a solution that would allow them to overcome their Active Directory obstacle and allow them to quickly integrate time travel as their go-live date was fast approaching. The team chose TimeShiftX as the best solution to meet their testing and environment needs for their critical project.

In this redevelopment project, the system needed to maintain, improve, and ultimately streamline all workflows and functionality of the old system. This meant the required scenarios and workflows needing validation was increased significantly. TimeShiftX gave the developers and testers the ability to run all simulations and validate all migrated and new workflows of the system. The instant time travel of TimeShiftX improved QA efficiency and ultimately accelerated the development timeline.

Documented Benefits

What changed for development, QA, and operational timelines

Highlights of the TimeShiftX implementation at New Zealand EPA:

• Time traveled seamlessly inside the government cloud architecture without making environment modifications
• Effortless integration across the load-balanced, distributed environment in under 30 minutes
• Successfully bypassed the Active Directory 5-minute skew restriction without server or domain changes
• Virtual times applied only to user software space, guaranteeing root operating system reliability and uptime
• Achieved full testing coverage for migrated and new workflows, boosting go-live confidence

Deploying and integrating TimeShiftX throughout the load balanced & distributed environment was effortless and took less than 30 minutes. This speedy integration allowed the infrastructure team to focus on core environment tasks while developers and testers immediately began running simulations, meeting their go-live date with confidence.