While debugging issues on a switch, it is critical to arrange logs in chronological order to understand the sequence of events
that resulted in the issue. MDS logs use different time formats and it is tedious to merge and sort them to understand the
timeline of events. The Uniform Timestamps feature allows onboard syslogs, accounting logs, and logs of various MDS software
components to use a uniform timestamp format. This allows quick merging and sorting of multiple logs together to build a complex
timeline onboard the switch. Logs can also be exported from the switch (by using the show tech-support command and so on) and processed easily by hand, scripts, or data-mining applications.
This feature enables RFC 5424 format timestamps. This format is supported by many other devices and vendors so that logs can
also be merged with other products to build an end to end timeline through a fabric. Ensure that clocks on all the devices
are synchronized before attempting this.
This feature does not change the format of syslogs that are exported to an external syslog server via the syslog protocol.
For more information, see the system timestamp format command in the Cisco MDS 9000 Series Command Reference, Release 8.x.