ROLE-BASED ACCESS NOTE: The features and functionality described in this article require the assignment of either the Admin or DevOps user role to your user account. Without either of these roles assigned, some or all of the functionality may not be available to you.
Once you have initialized a new Work Schedule or have chosen to edit an existing Work schedule, you will need to configure its characteristics in order to get the outcomes you expect. In this section, we'll review each of the customization capabilities of the Aimably Work Scheduler configuration screen.
Title
The Title is the primary way the Work Schedule is referenced throughout Aimably.
Enter a title here that will make sense to all users of your Aimably account. The title is displayed prominently on the Work Scheduler calendar view and should be helpful enough to give users a sense of the purpose of the Work Schedule.
It's helpful to make sure that the Title references or implies the Operation that is to be performed by Aimably during that scheduled period. Great examples include: "QA Weekend Powerdown" or "EOD Turn Off"
Operation
The Operation specifies the action that Aimably should perform for the Work Schedule.
There are three options for Aimably action, which each have their own purpose:
- Servers On for the Duration of the Schedule: At the beginning of the Work Schedule, the selected servers will be turned on. At the end of the Work Schedule, the selected servers will be turned off.
Example Use Case: A copy of the production database is required for customer support representatives during their scheduled hourly shifts. A Work Schedule of this type can be configured to ensure database servers are ready at the beginning of the shift and automatically offline at the end. - Servers Off for the duration of the Schedule: At the beginning of the Work Schedule, the selected servers will be turned off. At the end of the Work Schedule, the selected servers will be turned on.
Example Use Case: QA teams need access to testing environments during typical business hours and rarely in the middle of the night. A Work Schedule of this type can ensure the testing environment is brought offline in the middle of the night and is back online for the early birds. - Servers Off at the start of this Schedule: At the beginning of the Work Schedule, the selected servers will be turned off. They will not be scheduled for turn on and will need to be manually re-activated using the Manual Control module when needed.
Example Use Case: Occasionally, data scientists need access to a Redshift server and are prone to accidentally leaving it on once their work is complete. A Work Schedule of this type can be configured to ensure high value servers are automatically turned off at the end of logical work days.
Timezone
The Timezone refers to the start and stop times assigned on the schedule and allows you to skip translating timezones for multi-locational teams.
By default, the Timezone of a Work Schedule matches your company settings, however each Work Schedule may have its own Timezone. For example, if we borrow the example from item #1 above and know that your customer service team needs access to a production database copy during work hours, but the team is located in Mumbai, you can configure a work schedule for their known work hours using the Mumbai regional timezone.
Pro Tip: The timezone function adheres to regional time changes, so you do not need to update your work schedules based on adherence to Daylight Savings Time rules, nor do you need to track exact dates of each regional implementation of these rules.
Recurrence
The Recurrence allows you to configure which type of repeating behavior is expected in a Work Schedule. Selecting a Recurrence value changes the date/time selection options below.
There are two options for Recurrence: Single Day Recurrence or Multi-Day Span
Single Day Recurrence
To select Single Day Recurrence, select 'Schedule runs on various days during the week.'
Then, you will be allowed to select which days of the week the Work Schedule should run, selecting the beginning time and the ending time for the schedule on each day.
Please note that for each day you select with a checkmark, the Operation of the Work Schedule will begin each day at the time on the left of the screen and end each day at the time on the right of the screen, according to the Timezone selected above. If you would like to perform an activity that begins on one of the days of the week and ends on another, you'll want to select the Multi-Day Span.
Multi-Day Span
To select Multi-Day Span, select 'Schedule runs once a week, can span multiple days.'
Then, you will be asked to specify the day and time for the beginning of the repeating event followed by the day and time for the ending of the event.
Please note that the event will repeat weekly and if you would like to create multiple events in a week with the same properties, you will not be able to do so with this view. Rather, you will want to create multiple individual Work Schedules or adjust the Timezone in a Single-Day Recurrence schedule in order to achieve a similar outcome within a 24 hour period.
Assigned Servers
The Assigned Servers selection area allows you to quickly select a single server or multiple servers within the same category that should receive the same Work Schedule. The categories for server selection are highlighted in the screenshots below:
Only servers selected by a checkmark either individually or as a group will be affected by the Work Schedule. Conversely, any server not selected on this list or whose parent Region or Account that is not selected will not be affected by the Work Schedule.
Examples of how to apply a Work Schedule to a specific subset of controllable servers:
- All Servers Under Aimably Management: Select the checkmark at the top of the table next to 'Server Name'
- All Servers in an AWS Region: Select the checkmark in the table next to the name of the AWS Region
- All Servers in a Child Account within an AWS Region: Click on the toggle arrow to display the Child Accounts within an AWS Region, then select the checkmark in the table next to the name of the Child Account
- An Individual Server (Known AWS Region and Child Account): Click on the toggle arrow to display the Child Accounts within an AWS Region, then click on the toggle arrow to display the Servers within the Child Account. Finally, select the checkmark in the table next to the name of the individual server.
- An Individual Server (by Name or ID): Enter a subset of the name and/or ID into the Search box above the table and pause while Aimably retrieves the results. Find the server in the results list and select the checkmark in the table next to the name of the individual server.
- All Servers of a Specific Type: Enter the server type (e.g. t2.micro) into the Search box above the table and pause while Aimably retrieves the results. Select each of the checkmarks next to each of the names in the results list that have the same server type that matches your search.