Scheduling blackout periods for a domain

If you have regularly scheduled site maintenance periods, use a blackout period to suspend the content scan job so your site is not scanned while you are performing maintenance tasks. You can also use a blackout period for those times when your website is subject to heavy visitor traffic. Job and system administrators can schedule and override blackout periods if necessary.

Before you begin

Note:
  1. Blackout periods can be applied to any domain that you have configured in an instance. Content scan jobs will only suspend on domains that are internal to the job; they do not apply to any other domains that link from it. You must add any linked domains you want blacked out to the What to Scan > Additional Servers and Domains page and apply the blackout schedule to them.
  2. You must schedule blackout periods before the job starts from either the Administration tab or from a specific content scan job's configuration pages. The job will automatically suspend on the first blacked out internal domain it encounters and then automatically resume after the blackout period is over. When you schedule a blackout period for an internal domain, it affects all the jobs that scan that domain.
  3. If you change the blackout period of a domain that is internal to a suspended or running job, the changes will not be picked up by the job until a new scan starts.
  4. A scan job will not automatically resume running during a blackout period.
  5. If you manually override a blackout period for a particular domain, ALL blackouts for the job the domain belongs to are ignored.

Procedure

  1. Go to the What to Scan Page of the content scan job.
  2. Choose one of the following options and create or add a domain:
    • Domains Included in the Starting URLs
    • Additional Servers and Domains
  3. On the Edit Domain page of the job, click the Add icon (Create) in the Blackout Periods section.
  4. Select a time for the blackout period to begin and the duration of the blackout (in minutes). These times use the time zone of the domain.
  5. Select the frequency for how often the blackout period occurs.
  6. Select the occurrence of the blackout period.
  7. Specify a starting date. The blackout period can be turned on and then set to either stay in effect indefinitely (by not specifying an end date), or set to end on a particular date and time.
  8. Select the check box and then specify how long the blackout period will stay in effect by providing an end date and time. If you do not specify an end date, the schedule will never end.
  9. Click Add Blackout Period to add the blackout period to the global list.