Job scheduling for 365 backups

[pat_ren]

Hi all,

As everyone knows the scheduling options are pretty limited for 365 backup jobs. Currently we have around 550 jobs on one server, we run these jobs every 8 hours (3 times a day) and the default scheduler isn't working for us anymore. With the default schedule of 'every 8 hours' the start times for the jobs are hard coded, and the jobs all start at the same time eg. 12am, 8am, 4pm, every day. This means every job tries to run at the same time 3 times per day (~550 jobs) and as we continue to scale up and add more jobs, this is starting to cause issues.

I have done some manual tweaking using the schedule window/time periods which works, however this is really tedious and not practical for so many jobs.

I've started looking at other options, either a script to write new schedule and time periods for every job, or a a script that actually just starts the jobs when required, and we disable the default schedule, I just don't like the idea of all the jobs constantly showing as disabled in the UI. I have a few ideas on how to do this and some quick testing does work pretty well.

I did ask support about it and they were not very helpful, I'm wondering if anyone else has done this before so I don't have to re-invent the wheel? Seems like it's the kind of issue that anyone with a decent number of jobs will eventually encounter. Hopefully they can add improved scheduling into the product in future, even just a 'start time' or an offset for when jobs run every 8 hours or every 12 hours would be sufficient.

Thanks,
Pat

[LeeMackie]

You would think it's a pretty basic requirement really...

A post on the same subject I made over a year ago.
post484842.html#p484842

The only feasible way I see is that you run your own scheduler, either via API (so basically run a middlware app that is a scheduler) or Powershell. Either way, I haven't seen anything via Github or off the shelf to accompolish this so perhaps you'll need to reinvent the wheel.

[pat_ren]

Hi Lee,

Agree it seems like something pretty basic, I'm not sure that 365 backup was designed to be run as a service provider, I think they expect each client to be running their own VBO server but a lot of our clients with 365 backups don't have any servers so that doesn't really work.

I think it's pretty straight forward to have a powershell script or something manage the job scheduling for me but I was hoping to find a better way.

[LeeMackie]

I would disagree, I know plenty of large service providers running Veeam - 11:11 Systems and Probax are 2 that come to my mind immediately. If a customer has a decent footprint in M365, its getting more and more likely they won't have an on-prem infrastructure and keep pushing to SaaS offerings.

Veeam also lists it as a Backup as a Service product.
https://www.veeam.com/solutions/managed ... t-365.html

That being said, scheduling aside there are plenty of odd design decisions that makes you wonder who planned the UI design and who it was designed for...
- No ability to group or filter the organization list in the left column - got more than 100 orgs in that list? Get ready to give the mouse wheel a work out.
- No ability to search the password or encryption key windows
- History window can only be filtered by searching after everything loads
- List goes on and on

I digress though, I agree setting up some custom scheduling should be relatively simple via Powershell as long as your onboarding and naming conventions are all to a good standard.