Can I throttle my agent during business hours?

Intro

It may be necessary to reduce CloudSoda bandwidth usage during business hours. This can be achieved by adjusting the agent's cpu-concurrency setting in the soda.conf file. To learn more about cpu-concurrency or other agent configurations, please visit "can I manually configure an agent?".

NOTE: For multi-agent environments it is recommended to stagger cpu concurrency changes by at least two minutes.

Linux & macOS

To schedule bandwidth throttling on macOS or Linux, you can use cron. To do this, open /etc/crontab as root and add entries similar to the following: throttle performance down at 7 AM and return it to full speed at 9 PM. These times/days of the week can be adjusted to fit your schedule. The cpu-concurrency value is based on the amount of CPU the agent uses, which correlates with its performance. The lower the number, the slower the jobs will run on that agent.

0 7 * * * root (echo "cpu-concurrency: 10" >> /etc/soda/soda.conf && soda restart) >> /var/log/soda_task.log 2>&1
0 21 * * * root (sed -i '/cpu-concurrency/d' /etc/soda/soda.conf && soda restart) >> /var/log/soda_task.log 2>&1

Windows 

On Windows you can use Task Scheduler. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this:

1. Write the Scripts
First, you'll need to create two scripts: one for adding the line to your configuration file and restarting the service, and another for removing the line and restarting the service.

Add Line and Restart Service (cloudsoda_morning_task.ps1)

Add-Content "C:\Path\To\soda\soda.conf" "cpu-concurrency: 10"
Restart-Service -Name soda

Remove Line and Restart Service (cloudsoda_evening_task.ps1)

(Get-Content "C:\Path\To\soda\soda.conf") | Where-Object {$_ -notmatch "cpu-concurrency"} | Set-Content "C:\Path\To\soda\soda.conf"
Restart-Service -Name soda

2. Create Scheduled Tasks
You'll need to create two scheduled tasks in Windows Task Scheduler: one for the morning operation and one for the evening.

For the Morning Task:

1. Open Task Scheduler.
2. Choose "Create Basic Task" or "Create Task" for more options.
3. Name the task (e.g., "Morning Soda Task").
4. Set the trigger to Daily and set the start time to 7:00 AM.
5. For the action, choose "Start a Program" and browse to your morning script.
6. Finish the wizard.

For the Evening Task:

1. Repeat the steps above, but set the time to 9:00 PM and choose the evening script.

3. Logging (Optional)
To log the output as you do in Linux with >> /var/log/soda_task.log 2>&1, you can modify your PowerShell script to redirect the output to a log file. An example of this is:

$LogFile = "C:\Path\To\soda_task.log"

# Adding the line and restarting the service
Add-Content "C:\Path\To\soda\soda.conf" "cpu-concurrency: 10"
Restart-Service -Name soda 2>&1 | Out-File $LogFile -Append

Windows Notes

• Replace C:\Path\To\soda\soda.conf with the actual path to your soda.conf file. Depending on how the CloudSoda Agent was installed the soda.conf would be located in %ProgramData%\soda or %LocalAppData%\soda
• For PowerShell scripts, ensure that execution policies allow the script to run. You might need to run Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned or a similar command, depending on your security requirements.
• You may need to run the Task Scheduler with administrative privileges to have the necessary permissions to stop and start services.
• Make sure the user account under which the task runs has the appropriate permissions to modify the configuration file and to stop/start services.
• Test your scripts manually to ensure they perform as expected before scheduling them.