Power Scheduling is a new capability in Arcus that allows project leaders to set a default schedule used to automatically power off and power on deployed virtual systems for cost and energy savings. Typical use cases generally include Arcus Teams that have typical working hours and want to save money or resources by powering off non-essential VMs during non-work hours and weekends.
Looking for information on Basic Power Management in Arcus? See This KB article.
Enabling Power Scheduling at the Team Level
In order to utilize Power Scheduling, this feature needs to be enabled at the Team level by the Arcus Team Manager. Team Managers can find this toggle in Project Settings under the Account tab near the bottom of the Features section as pictured below.
Once this change in Team settings has been made by the Team Manager, further power scheduling functions are available at the Project level by the Project Owner, or any Project Member with the “Can manage project trusts and resources” permission set.
Enabling Power Scheduling at the Project Level
After being enabled at the Team level, Project Owners or users with sufficient permissions can now enable Power Scheduling at the Project level:
- On the left-hand menu, near the bottom of the page select Projects under the Manage header.
- From the Project Overview page, click “Manage” in the upper right corner of the page.
- Scroll down to Automated Power Management and toggle the slider as pictured below
- Select from the presets: Economy mode, Cost saving, Weekend shutdown, or set a Custom schedule
- Save Changes
If set, these power schedules will be applied to every currently deployed run and all future runs in a project.
Power Scheduling Settings
Economy mode: Runs hosts only during business hours. (Hosts will be powered off 17:00 - 08:00 Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu. Hosts will power off 1700 Fri and remain off until 08:00 Mon.)
Cost saving: Power off hosts overnight and on the weekend. (Hosts will be powered off 20:00 - 04:00 Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu. Hosts will power off 20:00 Fri and remain off until 04:00 Mon.)
Weekend shutdown: Power off hosts over the weekend. (Hosts will power off 23:59 Fri and remain off until 00:00 Mon.)
Custom schedule: Define custom rules for powering off hosts when they are not needed. (this can be set with two sliders for weekday and weekend scheduling as shown below)
Be sure to save any changes after making changes to a Project’s Power Scheduling.
Power Scheduling Override
Power scheduling can be modified for individual deployment runs at any time by users who are granted permission to do so. Typical use cases for overriding the auto-shutdown of the power scheduler include unplanned weekend hours, or working late to complete a project before a deadline. To override the Power Scheduling the user must have the “Can Override Deployment Run Power Management Settings” permission set.
To override the Power Scheduling, the user will be able to toggle a slider on the Run overview page.
Power Scheduling and Time Zones
The time zone of the power scheduler is automatically determined by the timezone setting of the Arcus account of the Project Owner who enables the feature for a given project. If you’re not clear which timezone your account is set to, you can view this by looking in Profile and Account in the upper right of the page.
Other users of a Project with Power Scheduling enabled will need to make note of this if they typically work in a different time zone to avoid the VM shutting down unexpectedly.
For example, User A sets the project power scheduler to shut down at 4PM every weekday and resides in the EST time Zone. User B is in the same project, and accesses the same runs, but works in CST, the same VM will shut down at 4PM EST, not 4PM CST (effectively 3PM CST). This can be mitigated by utilizing the Power Scheduling Override as described above.
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