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What's on the itinerary today, Microsoft? Ah, Azure Scheduler's getting a stay of execution

Three more months before all jobs stop and deletion starts

In what seems to be becoming a bit of a habit within the halls of Redmond, Microsoft has extended the life of another product, this time the doomed Azure Scheduler.

Scheduler was due for an appointment with Nadella's axeman retirement at the end of this month, but a week before the pulling of the breakers was due to begin, Microsoft has responded to "customer feedback and requests" and extended the deadline a little... with caveats.

The problem is that Scheduler is, by its nature, one of those services that an Administrator would set up and then leave running. Jobs are run in Microsoft's cloud and can invoke services inside and outside of Azure.

Those jobs can be run immediately, made to recur, or be scheduled for some point in the future. The service is, in Microsofts' words, "ideal for recurring actions" or "daily maintenance" and is "designed for high availability and reliability." Indeed, it will automatically switch to an alternative data centre in the same region should Azure suffer a wobble.

A year ago, Microsoft warned the venerable Azure Scheduler was to be replaced by Azure Logic Apps which, to be fair, is a handy replacement with features including managing each scheduled workload as a first-class Azure resource and running multiple one-time jobs using a single logic app.

However, the migration process is not entirely painless. A quick look at Microsoft's FAQ for the procedure would strike fear into the hearts of those with more than a few dozen jobs running.

The extension comes hot on the heels of one granted to Exchange 2010 and, while jobs running on the free Scheduler SKU will still stop on 30 September, and the ability to create new jobs will be removed, existing standard, P10 and P20 Scheduler resources will continue running.

On 31 October, Scheduler will be removed from the Azure Portal (meaning the resources will only be accessible through the API or SDKs.)

The final axe blow will come on New Year's Eve, 31 December 2019, when all jobs will stop and "all data will be deleted."

By then there will be mere weeks to go until Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 drop out of support, and some Administrator sphincters start pulsating.

Unless, of course, Microsoft blinks once again. ®

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