Azure Scheduler Centralizes Job Triggering

Azure Scheduler is a service that can initiate tasks from a central location in Azure data centers by invoking HTTP endpoints and sending messages to Azure Storage Queues. The service can be used to trigger routine tasks such as data refreshes, log pruning, and backups on Web sites or application back-end services. Azure Queue support allows Scheduler to trigger tasks that may not be run immediately and send work items to services that are not always running. Scheduler provisioning is simple and a free tier is available, but several Azure-based job scheduling alternatives may be worth investigating.

HTTP Invocations and Queue Messaging Supported

Scheduler is a relatively lightweight job triggering service that developers, IT administrators, and ISVs can use to centralize initiation of certain tasks that may run within Azure or elsewhere. Scheduler does not run the tasks itself and does not process task results. Rather, customer applications can retrieve responses received by Scheduler when task commands are sent and process them as necessary. For example, Scheduler could be used to regularly perform a heartbeat test on a Web site, and customer code could monitor responses returned to Scheduler for errors and issue an alert when one occurs.