Scheduling workloads for Workstations Laptops

Abstract

When backing up workstations or laptops, a system/network administrator expects the following:

• Backups schedules are spread among the day to minimize network congestions
• Housekeeping schedules are spread among the day to minimize network congestions
• Auto upgrade actions aren't done at every run in order to avoid network congestions (again !)
• The schedule must adapt to the end-user's habits

All comes together

User habits vary with work hours, remote work schedules and other factors, so there's no reliable way to figure out a fixed schedule. Having a variable schedule has the advantage to run whenever a computer is used. In order to achieve a variable schedule, NPBackup can be scheduled to run every 15 minutes, and will check whether a recent backup exists. If none exists, a backup is initiated. The notion of "recent" backup is configurable, and defaults to a day. In order to avoid all NPBackup clients to launch backups as that there is no recent backups on a monday morning, there is a setting that can inject a random delay between the backup decision and the actual backup, which defaults to 200 seconds.