Four schedule templates

Outcome

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to apply the right schedule template (Business Hours, Nights Only, Weekends Off, Dev Hours) to a workload and explain when to customize from a template.

1. Concept

Most schedules anybody builds turn out to be one of a few shapes. The schedule form ships four of them as templates.

Use one as it comes, or treat it as a starting point and change it. Nothing is hidden inside them: each one is a pair of crons, and applying it simply paints the weekly grid.

Template 1: Business Hours (Weekdays 9AM-6PM)

CRONS:
  "0 9 * * 1-5"     Start    weekdays 9 AM
  "0 18 * * 1-5"    Stop     weekdays 6 PM

COVERAGE:
  Running hours/week:   45 (9h × 5 weekdays)
  Stopped hours/week:  123
  Estimated savings:    73%

BEST FOR:
  Dev, staging, test environments used during office hours

This is the one most teams start from, usually with the hours shifted to fit the team.

Template 2: Nights Only (8PM-8AM Daily)

CRONS:
  "0 20 * * *"      Start    daily 8 PM
  "0 8 * * *"       Stop     daily 8 AM

COVERAGE:
  Running hours/week:   84 (12h × 7 days)
  Stopped hours/week:   84
  Estimated savings:    50%

BEST FOR:
  Overnight batch workers, nightly builds and data jobs

Read the name carefully: this template runs resources at night and stops them during the day. It is the inverse of the other three.

Template 3: Weekends Off (Stop Fri 7PM, Start Mon 7AM)

CRONS:
  "0 19 * * 5"      Stop     Friday 7 PM
  "0 7 * * 1"       Start    Monday 7 AM

COVERAGE:
  Running hours/week:  108
  Stopped hours/week:   60 (Fri 7 PM to Mon 7 AM)
  Estimated savings:    36%

BEST FOR:
  Workloads that run all week but are idle at weekends
  Teams whose engineers work late but never weekends

NOT FOR:
  Production that serves weekend traffic

Weekends Off is gentler than Business Hours (it never stops nightly).

Template 4: Dev Hours (Weekdays 8AM-10PM)

CRONS:
  "0 8 * * 1-5"     Start    weekdays 8 AM
  "0 22 * * 1-5"    Stop     weekdays 10 PM

COVERAGE:
  Running hours/week:   70 (14h × 5 weekdays)
  Stopped hours/week:   98
  Estimated savings:    58%

BEST FOR:
  Dev environments for teams that work long or staggered days

You may also meet the names “Peak Hours” and “Weekend Scale-Down”. Those are presets for autoscaler schedule triggers (Track 2), not start/stop schedule templates.

How templates behave on apply

1. Schedules → New Schedule
2. Template dropdown → "Apply a template..." → pick one
3. The grid is painted with the template's hours
4. Pick the timezone for this schedule
5. Adjust the grid if needed, name the schedule, Save
6. Attach resources (L5)

A template is not a special schedule type. It is a regular schedule, just pre-painted with the template’s hours. You can repaint any cell after applying it.

When to customize from a template

Three common customizations:

1. Shift the hours. Different team, different working hours. Paint 08:00 to 09:00 as RUNNING for an 8 AM start.

2. Add a region-specific shift. A team in Asia/Kolkata applies Business Hours, but their workday is 10 AM to 7 PM. Set the timezone to Asia/Kolkata, clear 09:00 to 10:00, and paint 18:00 to 19:00.

3. Add a Friday early stop. Some teams finish early on Friday. Clear Friday from 5 PM onward and the form writes an extra 0 17 * * 5 stop.

When to NOT use templates

Two situations:

• Complex schedules (rolling environments, freeze windows, demo prod). These deserve custom design.
• Tightly coupled to specific workload behavior. A workload that runs every Tuesday for 3 hours doesn’t match any template. Paint it yourself.

For everything else, templates are the right starting point.

2. Demo

Customer onboarding flow with a template:

T+0       Customer connects AWS account
T+10 min  Discovery completes; 187 non-prod resources discovered
T+11 min  Customer goes to Schedules → New
T+11 min  Template: "Business Hours (Weekdays 9AM-6PM)"
T+11 min  Pick timezone: America/Los_Angeles
T+12 min  Verify the painted grid
T+12 min  Save (still empty)
T+13 min  Attach the dev resources to the schedule (L5)
T+14 min  Schedule is active. Next stop: 6 PM PT today, for all
          187 resources

Savings depend on the estate; this walkthrough shows the speed,
not a dollar figure.

Fifteen minutes from cloud connection to active scheduling on 187 resources. Templates are the reason it’s that fast.

3. Hands-on (5 min)

Apply one of the four templates:

1. Schedules → New Schedule.
2. Template dropdown → pick "Business Hours" (or whichever fits).
3. Pick your team's timezone.
4. Read the painted grid: check it matches your team's hours.
5. Read the savings percentage and the next-trigger hint.
6. Customize if needed (e.g., paint 08:00 to 09:00 for an 8 AM start).
7. Save.
8. Do NOT attach resources yet: that is L5.

4. Knowledge check

Q1

The Weekends Off template stops resources at 7 PM Friday and starts them at 7 AM Monday. How many hours a week are they stopped?

A. 48
B. 56
C. 60
D. 64

Q2

A team applies the Nights Only template to their dev EC2 fleet, expecting the machines to be off overnight. What actually happens?

A. They run 8 PM to 8 AM and are stopped all day
B. They stop 8 PM to 8 AM, as the team expected
C. The template is rejected for dev resources
D. They keep running around the clock

Q3

A team in Asia/Kolkata applies the Business Hours template but leaves the schedule’s timezone at America/New_York. During US daylight time, the likely outcome:

A. Works fine
B. The schedule never fires in Asia/Kolkata at all
C. AWS rejects the timezone
D. Starts 6:30 PM, stops 3:30 AM Kolkata time

5. Apply

Templates are in the schedule create dialog:

• Schedule create: the Template dropdown sits above the grid
• Change any painted cell after applying: the template is a starting point, not a constraint
• The grid looks the same whether the schedule came from a template or was painted from scratch

For complex schedule patterns beyond the four templates, see Schedule design patterns.

Related lessons

• L5: Attaching resources and groups (next)
• L6: The savings percentage
• T3 M3.2: Schedule design patterns

Glossary terms touched

Preset