Spacing Out Searches

LogScale will always attempt to run a search exactly according to schedule. This makes scheduled searches predictable, but also risks that many scheduled searches will be configured to run at the same time, which might cause delays.

For example, it is common to schedule many jobs for midnight, if they are to be run daily. But if you experience delays in search execution because of a sudden high search load, try to space the searches out over a larger span of time.

One way to automate this, rather than manually tracking individual requests, is to use the H notification. Using H as the cron specification, allows LogScale to automatically choose the number of minutes past each hour that a scheduled search will be run.

Using this notation can be an effective way spreading out the execution of scheduled searches without having to monitor and track each scheduled search manually. The notation also makes it easy to copy and duplicate scheduled searches.

This method is only appropriate if you do not need to explicitly control the search window. Because H automatically chooses a minute, the search window will be determined by the chosen figure. For example, if you use the H notation to run the search from 24 hours ago to now, and the search runs at 0:48, then the search window will be from 0:48 yesterday until 0:48 today.

If you decide to run a search on another schedule, but wish to keep the same search window, you need to update start and end on your scheduled search. For instance, if your search was running at midnight and searching through the previous day, you would have configured the interval parameters as start=24h and end=now. But if you need to reschedule this search run at 3AM instead, you would have to update the interval parameters as start=27h and end=3h to search within the same 24 hour time window.