[VMC] Scheduled Tasks' Next Run Date is shifting by a week

Products

• VMware Cloud on AWS

Issue/Introduction

Configuring Scheduled Tasks which depends on the Day of the week (Eg. First Tuesday of every month at 5:00 am IST) may result in the the Next Run Date shifting by a week in some corner case scenarios. 

Environment

VMware Cloud on AWS

Cause

• TaskScheduler's API only accepts UTC timestamps and it only use UTC as a basis for its calculations.
• The time entered by the user in vCenter would be converted from local time to UTC which may fall under a different day due to the offset between the local and UTC time zone.
• VPXD would determine the date of the Scheduled Task based on the day in UTC time zone. This may cause the Next Run Date to shift by a week in some corner case scenarios where local and UTC time zone fall under different day and the first or last week of the month does not have certain days of the week.

Resolution

• Engineering team is aware of this issue and is working on a permanent fix for this in a future release.
• Workarounds available:-
  • For time zones with an offset of UTC+X, avoid scheduling tasks for a time before X:00
  • For time zones with an offset of UTC-X, avoid scheduling tasks for a time after (24-X):00

Additional Information

How Do You Create a Scheduled vSphere Task