PowerVC 2.0.2 and later comes with Scheduled tasks enablement for major operations. Now, you can easily schedule VM operations such as start, stop, restart and deploy. Scheduling these VM tasks are supported for users who are assigned to the roles such as admin, admin_asst, deployer, vm_manager. Starting with 2.0.2.1, self service users can also schedule stop, start and restart of VMs. This blog explains you how you can schedule tasks and monitor it.
Scheduling any task is as simple as executing any immediate operation in PowerVC. You will find the “Schedule for later” option on the same popup/page where you perform the action.
Common use cases
- As a system admin, you might want to stop/start/restart VMs at specific time. For example, after applying iFix or after OS upgrade, you might want to stop/start or restart VM when it’s not being used.
- Before scheduled hardware maintenance, admins can schedule stop of VMs. If the planned maintenance completion time is also known, at that time, start of VMs can also be scheduled.
- Hardware can be utilized very efficiently. If VMs are not going to be used in off hours or weekend, admin can schedule a stop and just when office hours starting, admin can schedule start of VMs.
- Deploy of VM can also be scheduled. If someone requests a VM in different time zone, admin can just schedule ‘Deploy VM’. Moreover, scale tests of deploy can be scheduled at weekend time where tests have minimal impact on development systems.
Schedule stop of VM
You can schedule stop of VM(s) by performing these steps.
- Go to Virtual machines list page. Select one or more VMs. Click Stop.
- Check ‘Schedule for later’. Choose date and enter time. The time you will provide is local time zone. Ensure that you have chosen valid date and time. Refer to Consideration and limitations section in the blog.
- Click Schedule stop. You will see a schedule notification.
- You can view the status of scheduled tasks on Dashboard > Tasks > Schedule tasks. If multiple VMs are chosen, we have task details which will show individual sub task details.
You are all set, stop VMs will be executed per schedule.
Schedule Deploy VM
You can schedule deploy of a VM by performing these steps.
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Go to Virtual machines section and click Deploy. This opens deploy page. You will see the option for ‘Schedule for later’ at the bottom left of the page. Now, choose date and enter time. The time you will provide is local time zone. Ensure that you have chosen valid date and time. Refer Consideration and limitations section in the blog.
- Click Deploy. Now, you can view the status of scheduled deploy on Dashboard > Tasks > Schedule tasks.
Deleting Scheduled tasks
If you want to delete any scheduled tasks, Go to Dashboard > Tasks > Schedule tasks, select the tasks you want to delete and click ‘Delete’.
A confirmation popup will appear and then click Delete. You can also choose to delete all scheduled tasks if required by clicking Delete all.
SSK user schedule operations
SSK user can also schedule stop, start and restart of VMs. Same flow as like normal user. Here we show an example of ssk user scheduling restart of multiple VMs.
Considerations and limitations
Consider the following while working with 'Scheduled tasks' feature.
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The max date to schedule a task is 90 days from current date.
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If multiple tasks are scheduled on a VM, there should be a minimal difference in time of 15 minutes.
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If a VM is to be deleted and if it has any scheduled tasks pending, first those tasks has to be deleted.
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If there was a scheduled task and at that time if UI server was down or PowerVC is down and if it had come back up within 5 minutes of the scheduled time, the scheduled task is processed. Otherwise, the scheduled task is marked as failed.
UI Tasks
The task menu has 'Tasks' tab which can be used to monitor long running operations performed from PowerVC UI. This is supported for
Clone VM, Clone Volume, Snapshot and restore of VMs, Export and import image, Upload and download to COS. The task details page will show real time
progress percentage along with actual API response. For example, below shows screenshot of snapshot and clone VM tasks and details page of
a snapshot task.
Conclusion
Scheduling of VM operations help system administrators to automate infrastructure operations at their convenient time. Hope this blog helped you to understand the new 'Schedule tasks' feature in PowerVC. Happy reading!
Knowledge center link: PowerVC
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Blog authors:
- Omie kumari
- Poovannan E