The following is for WindowsNT:

To randomize start times for schedules means to scatter each schedule's
start time across its startup
window.  A startup window is the start time and duration during which a
schedule must be initiated.

For the client-polling scheduling mode, you can specify the percentage
of the startup window that the server
can use to randomize start times for different client nodes associated
with a schedule.

If you set randomization to 0, no randomization occurs.  This process
can result in communication errors if
many client nodes try to contact the server at the same instant.

The maximum percentage of randomization allowed is 50 percent.  This
limit ensures that half of the startup
window is available for retrying scheduled commands that have failed.

It is possible, especially after a client node or the server has been
restarted, that a client node may not poll the
server until after the beginning of the startup window in which the next
scheduled event is to start.  In this
case, the starting time is randomized over the specified percentage of
the remaining duration of the startup
window.

Consider the following situation:

    The startup window for a particular event is from 8:00 to 9:00
    Ten client nodes are associated with the schedule
    Nine client nodes poll the server before 8:00
    One client node does not poll the server until 8:30

To set randomization to 50 percent enter:
        set randomize 50
The result is that the nine client nodes that polled the server before
the beginning of the startup window are
assigned randomly selected starting times between 8:00 and 8:30.  The
client node that polled at 8:30 receives
a randomly selected starting time that is between 8:30 and 8:45.

Thomas A. La Porte wrote:
>
> I think this topic has been discussed before on the list, but I'm
> going to ask the question again:
>
> How does the ADSM scheduler randomize the start times of clients?
>
> It appears to me that there is very little randomness to the
> start sequence of the clients, in fact, it seems to be completely
> ordered based on the inverse order in which the clients were
> registered to the server. I.e., the first machine that was
> registered to our ADSM server seems to *always* be the last
> machine backed up in the schedule.
>
> Are there any changes to the randomization in Version 3?
>
> "If I could dot the 'i' in a Michigan     Thomas A. La Porte
>  game and the good lord came to take me   DBA, Feature Animation
>  the next day ... at least I could        DreamWorks SKG
>  die happy." - Beano Cook, ESPN           <tlaporte AT anim.dreamworks DOT 
> com>