Alex - Yes, if each Server Scheduler instance is monitoring the same Watchfolder, they will all react when you save an XML task to the nominated Watchfolder, although in an unpredictable way, since upon execution, each Scheduler instance will try to delete the XML file.
If you only want one instance to react, which is all that is required, then you need to configure the other instances to monitor Watchfolders in other locations. This is easy when using spare Server keys, since each installation has its own configuration settings.
However, if you are only running multiple instances of the same Server installation, they will all monitor the same Watchfolder. You should use a separate spare Server key for the 'live' Watchfolder, and point the multiple instances of the principal production Server Edition to another 'dummy' watch folder location that is not used.
For benefit of other users who have the same issue:
Scheduler watch folder processing is carried out regardless of whether the scheduler is currently executing a task or not.
Best advise in your situation where you have 5 schedulers already doing something is to add a 6th one if the watch folder xml files are not that heavy in terms of RAM requirement for this designated job. If it does require a lot of RAM you are better of using one of your existing schedulers to process it and make other 4 schedulers not point to the same watch folder.
NOTE: Adding a 6th scheduler would mean that you would need to allocate it some RAM too just like you do for your existing 5 schedulers. Recycling an existing scheduler would mean you don't need to do any RAM allocation as watch folder actions are executed in the same VM as the scheduler.
I hope the above makes sense. If you have any queries let me know.
Thanks, makes perfect sense! We have allocated all schedulers 50% of our total RAM on the server. As the schedulers have their peak performance at different times this does not lead to problems.
Hi Mustafa, 2 schedulers were reporting activity from the watch folder. After reconfiguring one of these 2 schedulers only one executed the XML. So seems to be solved.
I think we needed to restart the scheduler in order to activate the right configuration.