Reference Guide CA Workload Automation CRON Scheduler Challenges and Business Impact Key Capabilities and What You Get Why This is Potential Impact to Your Business What to Look for in an Enterprise with CRON Important with CRON Workload Increased Automation Solution Increased Security/ Failed Manual Compliance Jobs/ Effort Risk Missed SLAs Advanced Job Scheduling. CRON only Static and limited • Dynamic, event-driven scheduling of offers time based job scheduling by options in job complex job-streams with support awakening at one minute intervals to scheduling hinders for If/Then/Else constructs, built-in start scheduled jobs representing script the ability to see functions and symbolic substitution or command processes. how jobs or system so scheduling decisions can be activity affect other made in real-time. job streams or • Scheduling based on the status processes. of other jobs and system activity such as file or database updates in addition to date/time scheduling. Workload Correlation/Relationships. If a job fails or is not • Support for scheduling of job- With CRON you can’t correlate one scheduled correctly, streams that map to business job to the next or alter the flow of incorrect data feeds applications. processing in a job-stream. can be passed to • Job-streams that “break-out” other jobs. complex internal scripts and processes that are error prone and run them as discrete jobs/tasks as part of a business-oriented work- flow. Job Status and Completion Detail. Time-sensitive • Advanced notification of job status CRON can’t tell if a job has finished processing and the ability to take action when early or late, and determining the requirements jobs finish early or late. status of jobs usually involves manual are unreliable, • Prediction of when jobs will checks. increasing error- complete and determine if they are prone manual tasks. on the critical path. Job Error Resolution. In CRON, a Increased time and • Simulation of work-flows to identify problem with processing typically effort required for errors prior to the workload requires manual intervention. identifying and becoming active. rectifying problems • Alert generation of failed or overdue can impact SLAs jobs which may negatively impact and potentially service level agreements. result in penalties. • Automatically identify errors and initiate corrective measures, or notification. Artificial Time Windows and Polling. Using arbitrary • Flexible scheduling using absolute Artificial time windows are often time windows and or relative time-frames or, more necessary in CRON and multiple polling intervals dynamically, based on other system job executions are often required to increases the activities such as file arrival or provide “polling.” batch window and database update. must be revised as • The ability to adjust job-streams workload volumes automatically to reflect critical or job times jobs and the current status of the increase. workflow. “We reduced our operational hours by replacing CRON with Impact Level Key: CA Workload Automation. Scheduling is easy and reliable with Low Medium High CA Workload Automation.” – Transportation Company CA Workload Automation Reference Guide Key Capabilities and What You Get Why This is Potential Impact to Your Business What to Look for in an Enterprise with CRON Important with CRON Workload Increased Automation Solution Increased Security/ Failed Manual Compliance Jobs/ Effort Risk Missed SLAs Cross Organization Workload Support staff • The ability to define, monitor and Management and Visualization. CRON typically access control all aspects of scheduled delivers limited workload visibility since several machines to workload from a central graphical there is no centralized monitoring or monitor processing interface across servers, operating control. and determine the systems and geographical locations. success or failure • Schedule workloads across of individual jobs disparate platforms such as Unix, which can involve Linux, Windows, i5/OS and z/OS, in time delays and addition to ERP solutions. missed errors. Failover Capabilities/Fault Tolerance. If outages occur, • High availability capabilities to CRON does not have failover it takes longer to automatically move the scheduler capabilities in the event of an outage of recover processing from one server to another in the the server on which it is installed. which impacts event of an outage. business continuity. • Support of clustering technology to enable jobs to be routed to different servers. Restart and Recovery. Manual process Manual recovery • Automatically resubmit a process to restart in CRON unless extensive requires or initiate notification and backout/ scripting has been integrated. investigation and recovery routines. is time consuming • Ability to recognize and take action and subject to based on generated exit codes. errors. Audit Trails/Compliance. CRON’s audit It is difficult to • Detailed logging to enable the trail capabilities are limited. determine which tracking and determination of users interacted potential errors during processing. with the schedule • Audit trail capabilities to determine or where processes who performed certain actions and encountered an when. error. “CA Workload Automation has made it easier for our Impact Level Key: application users to monitor their batch jobs by reducing Low Medium High reliance on system tools such as CRON. It has allowed us to manage all our workloads through a single point of control.” – Telco Company For more information, please visit ca.com/wla. For product information and a complete list of distributors, visit our website at: broadcom.com Copyright © 2019 Broadcom. All Rights Reserved. The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Broadcom, the pulse logo, Connecting everything, CA Technologies, and the CA technologies logo are among the trademarks of Broadcom. CS200-155458-0519 May 23, 2019.