What to Look For in Distributed Job Scheduling Tools
Explore the benefits of distributed job scheduling and how it can help your organization automate and optimize workloads.
What sets distributed job scheduler tools apart?
Modern job scheduling needs have transformed a lot since the mainframe-based scheduled workload and batch jobs days. Now that modern IT environments have grown in complexity, scope, and language, teams need distributed job schedulers to reliably schedule jobs and automate workloads across platforms.
While there are many distributed job scheduling solutions, they often leave something to be desired. For example, cron job’s reliance on scripts is at best a temporary fix that requires frequent maintenance and complex manual workarounds. This inhibits scalability due to the lack of enterprise-wide governance and can increase outages.
Open-source scheduling systems like Chronos may be a step up, but require manual work. Chronos requires Apache Mesos to manage resource allocation, which means Mesos must be installed and configured across your entire network.
Even AWS JumpCloud requires extensive scripting to integrate with other technologies.
How can modern IT teams find the right distributed job scheduling tool? Here’s what to look for.
Centralized automation and orchestration
When teams are managing workload automation, batch scheduling, and workflow automation, the last thing they need is to have to jump from platform to platform trying to get everything to play nice.
A tool like ActiveBatch enables teams to automate and orchestrate cross-platform IT and business processes from a single, central point. This makes it possible for your job scheduling tool to match your use cases, whatever they are. ActiveBatch also offers job replication so you can carry over jobs with minimal changes.
Platform- and environment-agnostic compatibility
Automating cross-platform job execution is crucial for maximizing the capabilities and fault-tolerance of distributed scheduling algorithms. For instance, if your org runs Windows systems and applications, it’s important your job scheduler integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Windows Task Scheduler, as ActiveBatch does. It’s also crucial your job scheduler works with your operating system, whether it’s Windows, Linux, UNIX, or others.
Because modern enterprise scheduling platforms are distributed systems deployed on-premises or in the cloud, it’s important job schedulers integrate with major vendors and provide REST API adapters to easily integrate tools and technology. Does your automation need to include a data center? The right job scheduler won’t require adding tools like Apache Kafka just to include your data center in workflow automation.
Full extensibility
In concert with vendor compatibility, an extensible job scheduler provides massive benefits for distributed scheduling. Creating end-to-end processes reduces reliance on custom scripts, accelerates roll-out, and reduces failure and latency.
ActiveBatch’s Integrated Jobs Library houses hundreds of production-ready job steps, including those that simplify SQL Server task automation. The library also has a wide array of proven integrations for applications, databases, and platforms, facilitating management of dependencies between disparate technologies.Full extensibility, platform compatibility, and centralization in tools like ActiveBatch ensure seamless end-to-end process orchestration across disparate and complex environments.
Frequently asked questions
Distributed job scheduling is a process of defining jobs and scheduling them to launch at a specific time. Job scheduler software solutions enable unattended scheduled jobs or workloads to run across multiple servers. Job schedulers manage jobs, schedule tasks, pass job information, and dispatch jobs to the right agent at the right time.
Discover how ActiveBatch’s scheduling software streamlines complex processes across IT and business operations.
Yes, ActiveBatch ensures ongoing efficiency through load balancing and automated server provisioning across your distributed computing system. ActiveBatch ensures seamless performance and does not charge for higher CPU or core counts. ActiveBatch Dynamic Queue Characteristics allows users to instruct ActiveBatch to evaluate multiple machines before jobs are sent to one. ActiveBatch quickly and reliably submits each job to the optimal machine depending on its needs.
Learn more about ActiveBatch’s infrastructure automation and resources.
ActiveBatch is a unified solution that integrates into the DevOps lifecycle so IT can develop automated workflows quickly and with fewer manual efforts. With ActiveBatch, teams can orchestrate containers (Docker, Kubernetes), facilitate audit trails and revision histories, promote continuous delivery with change management, and centralize resource logging, notifications, reporting, and monitoring.
Explore how ActiveBatch enables intelligent infrastructure and integrates with DevOps processes.
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