Termination date for Schedulers

[jsunderwood]

I would like to be able to schedule events to run for a specified period - up to a date or for a number of days or weeks. That schedule should then repeat after a specified interval.

 

The specific circumstances which make this desirable for us are: We have a requirement to run a recycle backup and follow it for a period with normal daily backups. Then a new recycle backup with another backup set. In the case I am thinking about, there are four backup sets, each of which is used for 13 weeks so that the whole cycle starts again 52 weeks later.

 

Currently this is achieved for each backup set with the following schedulers: Recycle backup on a Sunday morning at 02:00 for backup set A, repeated every 52 weeks. Then a scheduler starting at 07:00 on the same day running every day and repeating every 52 weeks. 12 more schedules start the job on successive Sundays and repeat 52 weeks later.

 

All of these schedulers are copied into the next set of 13 weeks for the next backup set.

 

I am quite sure that there could be a simpler way of doing this, but it seemed to me the only way of achieving it at the time.

 

However, if there were a cutoff date for a scheduler, it would be very easy to specify the start date of the cycle for each backup set and schedule the recycle backup on it to repeat every 52 weeks. The normal backups could then be specified to run every day, starting on the second day of the cycle and every day for 90 days (total). That whole pattern to repeat 52 weeks later.

 

It would even be possible to start of a fixed day of the month, run for three months and repeat a year later (which is what I would have preferred to do).

 

I can see several other benefits for a termination date - office holidays could be programmed, for example.