Scheduler Overview

The Identity Panel scheduler consists of a windows service for running schedules, an interactive command prompt that can run in service mode for diagnostics, a schedule editor in the Identity Panel settings section, and dashboard modules for running and monitoring schedules.

The scheduler allows creation of multiple schedules. A schedule is configured with the days and weeks that it runs, the times it starts, and for how long it repeats. A schedule consists of a sequence of steps that can run consecutively or in parallel. Which steps are available depends on which Panel platform modules are installed and enabled.

Features

• Run multiple schedules simultaneously
• Invoke schedules manually from Web UI
• Cancel pending schedules/steps from Web UI
• Only run on particular days of the month
• Steps from a single schedule can execute on different servers and stay synchronized
• Test the state of the environment before running a step
• Skip steps based on the result of running a step
• Trigger multiple steps simultaneously if the steps don't conflict with each other
• Fault tolerance to continue schedule execution in event of server failure
• Track results of schedule operations over time
• Extensibility for creating custom step types

Concurrency

The Panel Scheduler can run an arbitrary number of schedules against an arbitrary number of servers simultaneously. It is also able to trigger combinations of steps simultaneously. To prevent concurrency errors, each step has locking rules to provide for step isolation.

If incompatible steps would occur simultaneously, whichever step is lower in the list will be postponed until the previous step terminates. If incompatible steps are in separate simultaneously occurring schedules, then whichever schedule was started first, will generally have it's next steps dispatched first. All schedule step dispatch, concurrency, and precedence is coordinated by the web application, which allows locking to be respected in the case of server failure, and manual schedule execution.

Running Schedules

Identity Panel includes a dashboard module which can be used to start and manage running schedules. To configure this, navigate to the Dashboard settings and create a new Dashboard or modify an existing one. The dashboard should be associated to an administrative security role. Add a new module to the dashboard choosing the "View and Run Schedules" type.

Once the dashboard has been modified, navigate to the Identity Panel home page. To start a schedule ad-hoc, select it's name from the drop-down, and press the Run button.

If a schedule is in the queue or has running steps it will appear as a strip in the dashboard module. If you expand the strip you can see the names of steps, whether they are Pending or Running, and if Running, which server they are executing on. If you pause a schedule, all non-running steps will be placed in the Paused state. You then have the option to resume the whole schedule, or to step forward manually one step at a time.