Schedule your backups

You may use any scheduler to launch ElectricSheep.IO runs, such as Cron or Chronos. However, we think that the scheduling options for your backups should be:

• simple to read and configure: there's a 99% chance you'll want your backups to execute hourly or daily at a specific time
• come along your backup jobs: not in a crontab lost somewhere on your filesystem

ElectricSheep.IO thus provides you with an easy, built-in and human-readable way of scheduling your backups. To do so, specify a schedule for each of your job directly in your Sheepfile:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "daily"
  ...
end

Then start the program as a daemon:

electric_sheep start -d

That's it! Your backup project will execute every day at midnight, starting tonight.

Scheduling options

Hourly

To run your job every hour:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "hourly"
  ...
end

If you want your backup to start past a specific minute, use the past option (defaults to 0):

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "hourly", past: 10
  ...
end

Daily

To run your job every day at midnight:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "daily"
  ...
end

If you want your backup to start at a specific time:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "daily", at: "03:17"
  ...
end

Weekly

To run your job every monday at midnight:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "weekly", on: "monday"
  ...
end

If you want your backup to start at a specific time:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "weekly", on: "monday", at: "04:00"
  ...
end

Monthly

To run your prjoboject every fifteenth of a month:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "monthly", every: 15
  ...
end

If you want your backup to start at a specific time:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "monthly", every: 15, at: "04:00"
  ...
end

Cron

To setup a complex schedule, you may use Cron expressions:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "cron", expression: "* 1 * * *"
  ...
end

Multiple schedules

You may need to schedule a backup job multiple times, for example every 6 hours. To do so, simply use the schedule verb multiple times:

job "my-backup" do
  schedule "daily", at: "00:00"
  schedule "daily", at: "06:00"
  schedule "daily", at: "12:00"
  schedule "daily", at: "18:00"
  ...
end