diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index bb7a73bc50..f6e8f26922 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -451,6 +451,9 @@ Release 2.5.0 - UNRELEASED
 
     HDFS-6356. Fix typo in DatanodeLayoutVersion. (Tulasi G via wang)
 
+    HDFS-6447. balancer should timestamp the completion message.
+    (Juan Yu via wang).
+
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
     HDFS-6214. Webhdfs has poor throughput for files >2GB (daryn)
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/balancer/Balancer.java b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/balancer/Balancer.java
index f6e05a0c6e..8061b05356 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/balancer/Balancer.java
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/balancer/Balancer.java
@@ -1552,6 +1552,7 @@ public int run(String[] args) {
         System.out.println(e + ".  Exiting ...");
         return ReturnStatus.INTERRUPTED.code;
       } finally {
+        System.out.format("%-24s ", DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance().format(new Date()));
         System.out.println("Balancing took " + time2Str(Time.now()-startTime));
       }
     }