How to Set Up Scheduled Tasks on Your Game Server

Since EmeraldHost 2.0, you can create scheduled tasks under Schedules in your server's dashboard. This lets your server do things automatically, e.g. regular restarts, backups or console commands. You decide how often and at what time a task runs, and you can pause, change or start it manually at any time.

Available Actions

Create a Scheduled Task

1. Open Schedules
   Open your server's dashboard and click Schedules in the left sidebar.

2. Create a schedule
   Click Create schedule.

3. Choose the action
   In the Action step, choose what should happen automatically. The Name is suggested from the action and the schedule, but you can change it.

   For Send command, enter the command in the Command field just as you would in the console – without a / at the start.

4. Only while the server is running
   If Only while the server is running is enabled, this run is skipped while your server is off. Then click Next.

5. Set the schedule
   In the Schedule step, define when and how often the task should run. You can choose Minutes, Hours, Weekly and Monthly. Depending on your choice, you set e.g. every how many hours and at which minute the task runs, or at what time, and on which days (Daily, Weekdays, Weekend or individual weekdays). With Only within a time window you limit the task to a specific period. Then click Next.

6. Save the schedule
   In the Overview, check the action, the schedule and the next runs, and click Save schedule. The task is active immediately after saving.

Automatic Backups

A few things apply to backups in particular:

• At most once per hour: Backups run at most once per hour.
• Backup slots: When creating the task, you see how many of your backup slots are already in use.
• Delete old backups automatically: If this option is enabled and all slots are in use, the oldest unlocked backup is deleted. Locked backups are never deleted.

Example: Daily Restart with a Warning

With two tasks, you announce a restart in the game beforehand:

1. Create the warning
   Create a task with the Send command action that sends a message to all players daily at 03:55. The command you need depends on the game, e.g. say The server restarts in 5 minutes in Minecraft.

2. Create the restart
   Create a second task with the Restart action that runs daily at 04:00.

Manage Tasks

On the Schedules page you see all schedules you have created. There you can pause, reactivate, change or manually start each task.