IT groups must support many applications and servers across multiple platforms that frequently operate independently of each other. However, coordinating job scheduling across all these applications and networks is often required to optimize resource utilization. The traditional approach of applying more staff, toolkits, and rudimentary scheduling software to cobble together automated batch processing solutions becomes cost-prohibitive, inefficient, and error-prone, as the number of moving parts increases and the environment becomes more heterogeneous.
TMEvaluation Guide | Tidal Software
Evaluation Guide TMTidal Enterprise SchedulerTidal Enterprise Scheduler
Purpose BackgroundThis document discusses the requirements for The discipline of job scheduling was first job scheduling software in the modern distributed established in the 1970s when it became a key enterprise. It provides a comprehensive list of key strategic infrastructure component for large job scheduling features and a description of each mainframe-oriented data centers. A variety of feature. A companion checklist is also available. products were created and extensively marketed, The checklist is designed to assist those actively and it became widely accepted that a reliable evaluating job scheduling and event-driven job scheduling tool was required to effectively automation software by providing a tool for manage batch-oriented applications on the quickly and efficiently gathering information on mainframe. During this period of mainframe-products under consideration. centric computing, a common understanding To set the proper context for a detailed of the key features of job scheduling began to discussion of key job scheduling features, emerge. When UNIX began to make inroads into this document includes some background and mainstream data centers in the mid-1990s, IT history of the evolution of the job scheduling managers widened their search to job scheduling marketplace. This background will help the solutions for managing batch processing in a reader understand how changing business and distributed environment.industry requirements impact the job scheduling As the shift to UNIX began, few of the existing arena. Among the handful of disciplines that mainframe vendors created new job scheduling routinely take place in the data center, job offerings to fill the void. Instead, mainframe scheduling may be the most important of all. This vendors and many mainframe-oriented data is a bold statement, given that job scheduling centers experimented with attempts to manage competes with other important systems distributed workload from the mainframe. management functions like file backup, network As UNIX servers continued to make their management and security. way into the core data center, a new group of While these are important disciplines in their competitors entered the market with products own right, there is no arguing that, depending created expressly for managing distributed job on the size of the enterprise, a job scheduler is scheduling.routinely managing thousands-or, in many As the two competing approaches were cases, tens of thousands-of individual mission deployed, it quickly became apparent that the critical business processes every day. In fact, the products created expressly for the distributed number of processes involved can be so large that environment were a far better approach, and the a manual approach is not possible. mainframe approach to managing distributed Custom job scheduling solutions that rely workload was relegated to a small market on native operating system utilities such as segment. Even so, many mainframe data centers CRON, NT Scheduler, PERL and VB scripts still cling to the elusive dream of managing all quickly collapse under the weight of their own workload regardless of platform from a single unmanageable "spaghetti code" and custom mainframe console. Unfortunately, few if any have scripting requirements. Given this backdrop, been able to achieve this goal, and few vendors it is easy to see how job schedulers are an appear to focus on the issue.indispensable part of your IT infrastructure. The early distributed offerings proved to be reasonably robust and did a passable job of mimicking mainframe scheduling features and functions, but they suffered from being first generation products. Eventually, all of the prominent vendors of these products "hit the wall" in terms of scalability, flexibility and ease of use and were ultimately acquired in the late 1990s by mainframe companies still grappling with the unique issues and challenges of the distributed marketplace.Evaluation Guide
During the period that the first generation technologies. These products also reflect products were being acquired, new players a deeper understanding of the rigorous began to emerge, crafting more advanced requirements for building a true cross-solutions for job scheduling in the distributed platform solution that incorporates ... [download for more]
