Using prime numbers to avoid cron task collision at sametime

2 pointsakshayB6 comments

I would like to get input from you all. We have legacy system (bit of a pain to maintain) where multiple corn jobs runs (8 to be precise) and engineers who created the system put everything to run at 5 minutes interval. Computationally task is heavy and often results into a crash or running out of memory but business owners are fine if things are delayed by like an 1 hour or so.

My idea was to run on prime intervals instead of every 5 minutes. Couple of them have depend on output from others tasks but that should not be an issue.

Job 1 - Every 5 minutes ( computational less intense )

Job 2 - Every 7 minutes

Job 3 - Every 11 minutes

Job 4 - Every 13 minutes

Job 5 - Every 17 minutes ( computational more intense )

.... and so on

This should put a significant dent in avoiding them running at same time and leaving some room for each task to finish itself. I was just wondering if there is any other alternative that I can explore here.

Thanks for any suggestions in advance.

View on HN

*/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_1 2-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_2 4-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_3 6-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_4 8-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_5 10-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_6 12-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_7 14-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_8