Push Job Scheduler (like Control-M from BMC)

Chef Infra (archive)
1

Hi folks,

There is a feature in Push Jobs Server to schedule jobs in an organization or environment level (and not in user level like crontab)?

We are using currently the BMC Control-M (http://www.bmcsoftware.com.br/it-solutions/control-m.html), but as we are switching from BladeLogic (from BMC too) to Chef, we will need to find some way to switch from this tool.

Hopeful, thanks in advanced.

Regards,

2

I think that an alternative way would use a condition for "time attribute" inside some recipe, but I didn't found any ohai plugin yet that collects something similar to this (see an example and link below).

https://docs.cfengine.com/docs/3.5/reference-classes#hard-classes

Time Classes of CFEngine3

  • Day of the Week - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,...GMT_Monday, GMT_Tuesday, GMT_Wednesday,...
  • Hour of the Day in Current Time Zone - Hr00, Hr01,... Hr23 and Hr0, Hr1,... Hr23
  • Hour of the Day in GMT - GMT_Hr00, GMT_Hr01, ...GMT_Hr23 and GMT_Hr0, GMT_Hr1, ...GMT_Hr23.
  • Minutes of the Hour - Min00, Min17,... Min45,... and GMT_Min00, GMT_Min17,... GMT_Min45,...
  • Five Minute Interval of the Hour - Min00_05, Min05_10,... Min55_00 and GMT_Min00_05, GMT_Min05_10,... GMT_Min55_00.
  • Quarter of the Hour - Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and GMT_Q1, GMT_Q2, GMT_Q3, GMT_Q4
  • An expression of the current quarter hour - Hr12_Q3 and GMT_Hr12_Q3
  • Day of the Month - Day1, Day2,... Day31 and GMT_Day1, GMT_Day2,... GMT_Day31
  • Month - January, February,... December and GMT_January, GMT_February,... GMT_December
  • Year - Yr1997, Yr2004 and GMT_Yr1997, GMT_Yr2004
  • Period of the Day - Night, Morning, Afternoon, Evening and GMT_Night, GMT_Morning, GMT_Afternoon, GMT_Evening (six hour blocks starting at 00:00 hours).
  • Lifecycle Index - Lcycle_0, Lcycle_1, Lcycle_2 and GMT_Lcycle_0, GMT_Lcycle_1, GMT_Lcycle_2
    See also: sys.cdate, sys.date.

So, for while, I'll try to write some plugin to generate these time attributes.

Regards,

3

Users on IT Central Station looking for alternatives to BMC Control-M also read reviews for CA Workload Automation. This user writes, “We use it as our enterprise-level scheduling systems. After we started using CA Workload Automation, everything became one integrated system. It makes the troubleshooting and monitoring much easier.” You can read the rest of her review here.

I hope this is helpful, and good luck with the transition.

4

So Control-M and Chef are nothing at all similar in what the tools are designed to do. Chef is not meant to be a workload scheduler. Trying to use Push Jobs for this purpose, in my opinion, is foolish and the amount of time you would spend trying to come close to achieving the same functionality (i.e., conditions) would far exceed any perceived savings. Push jobs also have a limited lifespan in the Chef ecosystem according to Chef (they have already been replaced in Automate).

Robert