About Resource Scheduler

Learn about Resource Scheduler and how you can use it to reduce the costs of resources in your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure tenancy by automatically starting and stopping to meet your particular business needs.

Oracle Resource Scheduler reduces the cost of your database and Compute resources by stopping them when they're not needed, and restarting them when they're needed. Resource Scheduler creates a fully automated Auto-Stop/Start scheduling function that acts on the resources across an entire tenancy with any schedules that you create.

You can manage schedules that perform actions on a collection of on-boarded resource types so that their lifecycle and operating times are managed to minimize their operating costs. You can create a schedule in a tenancy or a compartment to manage resources in the tenancy or any compartment in it if you create the correct policy. See Resource Scheduler IAM Policies for details.

The Resource Scheduler service is integrated with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management (IAM) service, providing easy authentication with native Oracle Cloud Infrastructure identity functionality.

When implemented, the automated management sets the state of resources as needed to effectively manage resources such as those used for testing, development, and demonstration, and reduce costs when using the OCI cloud.

Resource Scheduler supports the following resource types:

Compute instances
Compute instance pools
Autonomous Databases
Function resources

To get the complete list of supported resources, see the ListResourceTypes API.

Benefits

Resource Scheduler provides the following benefits:

Save money: Creating a schedule to stop a resource when it's not needed pauses billing for standard Compute shapes and autonomous databases. This reduces the cost of your resources.
Efficiently manage your resources: The fully automatic Start-Stop functions provide best practices to manage your resources and use them only when needed. Resource Scheduler effectively manages usage of short term resources such as those used for testing and development, and reduces costs when using the OCI cloud.

Using Resource Scheduler, you can create a schedule to stop a set of local resources at 5:00 p.m. when employees go home, and have them automatically restart at 8:00 a.m. at the beginning of the work day. This reduces consumption by 16 hours per day and cuts operating costs by almost 67% per day over letting the resources run 24 hours a day. you can also stop the resources during the weekend when they're not needed.

Using test and demonstration resources, you can create a set of test resources and automatically schedule them to start at specific times, and then automatically stop them when they're no longer needed to optimize their utilization.

How Resource Scheduler Works

Resource Scheduler uses a set of APIs to create work requests that complete specific tasks such as creating, updating, starting, stopping, enabling, disabling, and deleting schedules. During each operation, Resource Scheduler displays the status of the schedule. When Resource Scheduler is enabled, it continuously reads the schedules that you have created. It takes the actions specified in the schedules at the times you have set, on the resources that you have selected. You can create any number of schedules that affect the state of the resources in the tenancies that you specify.

Using Resource Scheduler, you can manage the state of your resources with the Console, REST API, and CLI. Using these tools, you can create, change, start and stop the schedules to best match your needs and tailor the use and costs of your resources.

The following table lists and describes the different operational statuses of Resource Scheduler schedules:

Operational Status
Status	Operation
Creating	The schedule status while you creates a schedule. Resource Scheduler creates a work request with the information you have entered. It takes a minute or more for the system to process the information and create a schedule.
Failed	The schedule status if Resource Scheduler finds an error in a schedule setting and stops a schedule from being created. Errors can include "Resource not found," "Incorrect time or date format," and blank entries.
Pending	The schedule status when a schedule is ready to run, but has not started yet,
Enabled	The schedule status when a schedule has started and is running.
Ended	The schedule status when a schedule completes its run and stops, the status is Ended. When a schedule ends, it is also disabled. To enable the schedule, you must first update it and change the end date to a future time.
Updating	The schedule status while Resource Scheduler updates a schedule. If you change a schedule, Resource Scheduler creates a work request with the information you have entered. It takes a minute or more for the system to process the information and update the schedule. When the updates to a schedule are complete, the status depends on whether the schedule is waiting to start or is running.
Disabled	The schedule status after you disable a pending or enabled schedule, The schedule does not run, even if the start time has passed.
Enabled	The schedule status after you enable a disabled schedule.

Prerequisites

This section lists prerequisites for using Resource Scheduler:

Authentication

To use any of the Resource Scheduler API functions, you must be authorized in an IAM policy. If you're not authorized, contact the administrator. If you're an administrator who needs to write policies to give users access, see Managing Identity Domains.

For information about using the API and signing requests, see REST API documentation and Security Credentials. For information about SDKs, see SDKs and the CLI

Using the API and CLI with Different Operating Systems

Note the following requirements for using Resource Scheduler with different operating systems.

Windows

Before using Resource Scheduler on a Windows computer, you must install Git Bash for Windows and run commands with that tool.

To get the key's fingerprint, run the following OpenSSL command at the prompt:

   openssl rsa -pubout -outform DER -in \.oci\oci_api_key.pem | openssl md5 -c

When you upload the public key in the Console, the fingerprint is also automatically displayed there. It looks something similar to this: 12:34:56:78:90:ab:cd:ef:12:34:56:78:90:ab:cd:ef

In Windows, to pass complex input to the CLI as a JSON string, you must enclose the entire block in double quotes. Inside the block, each double quote for the key and value strings must be escaped with a backslash (\) character.

Linux and Mac OS X

To get the key's fingerprint, use the following OpenSSL command:

openssl rsa -pubout -outform DER -in ~/.oci/oci_api_key.pem | openssl md5 -c

Example Schedules

You can create several types of schedules as shown in the following table.

Example Schedules in a Compartment
Display Name	Status	Resource Criteria	Schedule	Action	Last Run Date UTC time	Last Run Status	Next run date ⁝ (see actions menu)
Schedule1	Enabled	Select Resources	Every week at 10:00 on Monday	Start	Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 20:00:00 UTC	Success	Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 20:00:00 UTC ⁝
Compute1	Enabled	Compartment, Type	Every 2 weeks at 8:00 on Wednesday	Stop	Mon, Mar 4, 2024, 20:00:00 UTC	Success	Wed, Mar 6, 2024, 16:00:00 UTC ⁝
Instance3	Pending	Type, Tag	At 0800 on April 1, 2024	Start	-	-	Mon, April 1, 2024, 15:00:00 UTC ⁝
Autonomous Database 1	Disabled	Type	Every hour at 00	Start	Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 20:00:00 UTC	Success	Mon, Apr 1, 2024, 20:00:00 UTC ⁝
Autonomous Database 2	Disabled	Compartment, Type	Every hour at 30	Stop	Mon, Mar 18, 2024, 20:00:00 UTC	Error	Mon, Apr 1, 2024, 20:00:00 UTC
Showing 5 items <1 of 1>

Schedule details
Component	Description
(Schedule) Status	Select Creating to display the list of statuses. Highlight and select the status of the schedules that you want to see. Creating: (default) When you create a schedule, Resource Scheduler creates a work request with the information you have entered. It takes a minute or more for the work request to process the information and create a schedule. Pending: A schedule has been created and is ready to run, but is waiting to start. Active: A schedule has been started and it running Updating: If you change schedule, Resource Scheduler creates a work request with the information you have entered. It takes a minute or more for the work request to process the information and update the schedule. Deleting: A schedule has been deleted by a user and a work request is processing it. Deleted: A schedule has been deleted. Failed: If Resource Scheduler finds an error in a schedule settings and stops a schedule from being created, the schedule fails. Errors can include Resource not found, Incorrect time or date format, and blank entries. Enabled: When you enable a disabled schedule, the schedule returns to its previous state, such as Pending or Active. Disabled: When you deactivate a Pending or Active schedule. Ended: When a schedule completes its run and stops, the status is Ended: Note that the schedule is also Disabled. You can't enable an Ended schedule. Edit the schedule and change the end date to a future date.
Action Type	Start: (default) Select the displayed action to change it from start to stop. Stop: Select the displayed action to change it from stop to start.
Filter	Select Filter to display the list with the selected filter.
Reset	Select Reset to display the default filter (Creating).

Name	The name of the schedule. 1 to 1024 char, all letters (upper and lowercase) numbers, all special characters except line feed, carriage return and NULL.
Resource Criteria Select Select resources.	Type	Database (select to expand)	Databases Database 1 OCID Database 2 OCID Database 3 OCID
	Type	Instance	OCID rx.…
	Tag	Namespace A-Key1:Value1
	View resources		Select View resources to see the resources listed by the resource criteria listed above.
Action	The last action that ran on this schedule Start Stop
Schedule	The selected time interval date and time when the action is set to run, including the hour, minute, and time zone, in UTC time format.
Last run date	The latest date and time that the schedule ran, in UTC time format.
Last run	The status of the last schedule action. Success means the selected action ran to completion without any errors. Error means that the scheduled action failed. The error details are displayed on the resource details page. The messages are from the Error object returned by the Compute InstanceAction API or the database equal API.
Next run date	The next date and time that the Action is scheduled to run, in UTC time format.
⁝ (Actions menu) Select to display the list of actions.	View details Edit schedule Clone schedule Enable schedule Disable schedule Select an action to open the relevant window and make needed changes.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation