Create a Schedule

With the scheduling feature, you can schedule commands to be executed at a specific time, on a specific day, on an ongoing basis or only once. This feature issues PacketWise commands when your Packeteer unit is unattended, allowing you to automatically vary bandwidth-allocation policies according to the time of day or day of the week. For example, you can schedule a policy that restricts MP3 file downloads during business hours and schedule another less restrictive policy for after-hour music downloads. This feature could also be used to schedule tasks (such as backing up measurement data) to run during a specified maintenance window. You can create up to 64 schedules.

You can schedule a single CLI command or a series of commands. If you want to create a scheduled item for multiple commands, you need to enter the CLI commands into a text file. For more information, see Create a Command File.

Note: To perform this task from PolicyCenter, you must first select a group and/or unit configuration from the Group: and Unit: drop-down lists at the top of the page.

To create a new schedule:

1. Click the setup tab on the navigation bar.

2. From the Choose Setup Page list, select command scheduling.

3. Click new. The Add Schedule Entry page appears.  show screen

4. In the Executing field, specify the command(s) you want to schedule:

Choose command and enter the CLI command in the empty text field. (See Command-Line Interface.)

-or-

Choose file and enter the name of the command file in the empty text field. If the file is not located in the 9.256/cmd directory, specify the complete path.

5. If you want the command file to be deleted automatically after it has been executed at the scheduled time, select the delete file when done checkbox.

6. In the At time field, specify the time you want to execute the command. Select one of the following:

Choose local time and enter the time in the format hh:mm:ss where hh is the hour from 0 to 23, and mm and Ss are minutes and seconds from 0 to 59. For example, to specify the time 5pm, enter 17:00.

-or-

Choose UTC time and enter a coordinated universal time (UTC). Specifying times in UTC (a standard similar to Greenwich mean time) is useful when managing units in different time zones. For example, 1800Z is 1pm in Eastern standard time and 4pm in Pacific standard time.

Note: PacketWise will attempt to execute the command within a 40-second window. If you want to allow more time for the command(s) to be executed, you can specify a range (for example, 08:00-08:02).

When setting the time for a scheduled command, keep biannual time changes into consideration. For example, if you set a command to execute at 2:30am in the United States, the command will not be executed when the clock changes ahead one hour for Daylight Saving Time. You can ensure a command will be executed during a clock change by specifying a time range (such as 02:00-04:00).

7. Select the day(s) you want to execute the command:

8. If you want the command to be executed once for each of the specified dates, select the once only checkbox. If you don’t select this checkbox, the command will be executed on an ongoing basis, according to the date(s) you specified.

9. In the Mail results to text fields, specify up to four email addresses to which you want to send the output of the command or command file execution. This allows you to confirm that the command executed at the specified date and time.

Note: In order to send email confirmations, you must configure a mail server using the setup email CLI command.

10. Click OK. The scheduled item is now listed on the Command Scheduling setup page.  show screen

Scheduled commands are part of the unit's configuration and are retained after resetting or rebooting the unit.

See also:

Vary Management Strategy by Time and Day

List Schedules

Edit a Schedule

Delete a Schedule