Managing scheduled pipelines

A step-by-step tutorial on how to create, update, and delete scheduled pipelines in ZenML

Managing scheduled pipelines

This tutorial demonstrates how to work with scheduled pipelines in ZenML through a practical example. We'll create a simple data processing pipeline that runs on a schedule, update its configuration, and finally clean up by deleting the schedule.

How Scheduling Works in ZenML

ZenML doesn't implement its own scheduler but acts as a wrapper around the scheduling capabilities of supported orchestrators like Vertex AI, Airflow, Kubeflow, and others. When you create a schedule, ZenML:

1. Translates your schedule definition to the orchestrator's native format
2. Registers the schedule with the orchestrator's scheduling system
3. Records the schedule in the ZenML metadata store

The orchestrator then takes over responsibility for executing the pipeline according to the schedule.

For our full reference documentation on schedules, see the Schedule a Pipeline page.

Prerequisites

Before starting this tutorial, make sure you have:

1. ZenML installed and configured
2. A supported orchestrator (we'll use Vertex AI in this example)
3. Basic understanding of ZenML pipelines and steps

Step 1: Create a Simple Pipeline

First, let's create a basic pipeline that we'll schedule. This pipeline will simulate a daily data processing task.

from zenml import pipeline, step
from datetime import datetime

@step
def process_data() -> str:
    """Simulate data processing step."""
    return f"Processed data at {datetime.now()}"

@step
def save_results(data: str) -> None:
    """Save processed results."""
    print(f"Saving results: {data}")

@pipeline
def daily_data_pipeline():
    """A simple pipeline that processes data daily."""
    data = process_data()
    save_results(data)

Step 2: Create a Schedule

Now, let's create a schedule for our pipeline. We'll set it to run daily at 9 AM.

from zenml.config.schedule import Schedule
from datetime import datetime

# Create a schedule that runs daily at 9 AM
schedule = Schedule(
    name="daily-data-processing",
    cron_expression="0 9 * * *"  # Run at 9 AM every day
)

# Attach the schedule to our pipeline
scheduled_pipeline = daily_data_pipeline.with_options(schedule=schedule)

# Run the pipeline to create the schedule
scheduled_pipeline()

Running the pipeline will create the schedule in the ZenML metadata store. as well as the scheduled run in the orchestrator.

Best Practice: Use Descriptive Schedule Names

When creating schedules, follow a consistent naming pattern to better organize them:

# Example of a well-named schedule
schedule = Schedule(
    name="daily-feature-engineering-prod-v1",
    cron_expression="0 4 * * *"
)

Include the frequency, purpose, environment, and version in your schedule names.

Step 3: Verify the Schedule

After creating a schedule, it's important to verify that it exists in both ZenML and the orchestrator. This verification helps ensure your pipeline will run as expected.

Step 3.1: Verify the Schedule in ZenML

Let's check if our schedule was created successfully using both Python and the CLI:

from zenml.client import Client

# Get the client
client = Client()

# List all schedules
schedules = client.list_schedules()

# Find our schedule
our_schedule = next(
    (s for s in schedules if s.name == "daily-data-processing"),
    None
)

if our_schedule:
    print(f"Schedule '{our_schedule.name}' created successfully!")
    print(f"Cron expression: {our_schedule.cron_expression}")
    print(f"Pipeline: {our_schedule.pipeline_name}")
else:
    print("Schedule not found!")

Using the CLI to verify:

# List all schedules
zenml pipeline schedule list

# Filter schedules by pipeline name
zenml pipeline schedule list --pipeline_id my_pipeline_id

Here's an example of what the CLI output might look like:

Schedules list CLI

Step 3.2: Verify the Schedule in the Orchestrator

To ensure the schedule was properly created in Vertex AI, we can verify it using the Google Cloud SDK:

from google.cloud import aiplatform

# List all Vertex schedules
vertex_schedules = aiplatform.PipelineJobSchedule.list(
    filter=f'display_name="{schedule.name}"',
    location="us-central1"  # Replace with your Vertex AI region
)

our_vertex_schedule = next(
    (s for s in vertex_schedules if s.display_name == schedule_name), None
)

if our_vertex_schedule:
    print(
        f"Vertex AI schedule '{our_vertex_schedule.display_name}' created successfully!"
    )
    print(f"State: {our_vertex_schedule.state}")
    print(f"Cron expression: {our_vertex_schedule.cron}")
    print(
        f"Max concurrent run count: {our_vertex_schedule.max_concurrent_run_count}"
    )
else:
    print("Schedule not found in Vertex AI!")

Make sure to replace us-central1 with your actual Vertex AI region. You can find your region in the Vertex AI settings or by checking the location parameter in your Vertex orchestrator configuration.

Step 4: Update the Schedule

Sometimes we need to modify an existing schedule. How you update a schedule depends on your orchestrator:

• Kubernetes orchestrator: Supports direct schedule updates - ZenML will update the CronJob directly on the cluster
• Most other orchestrators (including Vertex AI used in this tutorial): Do not support direct updates, so you'll need to delete the old schedule and create a new one

For orchestrators that support direct updates, you can simply use:

zenml pipeline schedule update <SCHEDULE_NAME_OR_ID> --cron-expression='0 10 * * *'

For orchestrators like Vertex AI that don't support direct updates, follow this two-step process:

1. Delete the existing schedules (both from ZenML and the orchestrator)
2. Create a new schedule with the updated configuration

Step 4.1: Delete the Existing Schedule

First, delete the schedule from ZenML (this archives the schedule by default):

# Archive the schedule from ZenML
client.delete_schedule("daily-data-processing")

Using the CLI:

# Archive a specific schedule (soft delete)
zenml pipeline schedule delete daily-data-processing

Important: For orchestrators that don't support native schedule deletion (like Vertex AI), you must also manually delete the schedule from the orchestrator. For orchestrators that do support it (like Kubernetes), ZenML will handle the orchestrator-side deletion automatically.

For Vertex AI, you need to delete the orchestrator schedule:

from google.cloud import aiplatform

# List all Vertex schedules matching our schedule name
vertex_schedules = aiplatform.PipelineJobSchedule.list(
    filter=f'display_name="{schedule.name}"',
    location="us-central1"  # Replace with your Vertex AI region
)

# Delete matching schedules (necessary before creating a new one)
for schedule_to_delete in vertex_schedules:
    schedule_to_delete.delete()
    print(f"Schedule '{schedule_to_delete.display_name}' deleted from Vertex AI!")

Step 4.2: Create the Updated Schedule

Now, create a new schedule with the updated parameters:

# Create a new schedule with updated parameters
new_schedule = Schedule(
    name="daily-data-processing",
    cron_expression="0 10 * * *"  # Changed to 10 AM
)

# Attach the new schedule to our pipeline
updated_pipeline = daily_data_pipeline.with_options(schedule=new_schedule)

# Run the pipeline to create the new schedule
updated_pipeline()

Or using a script:

# After deleting the old schedule, rerun the pipeline to create the new one
python run.py # or whatever you named your script

Step 5: Monitor Schedule Execution

Let's check the execution history of our scheduled pipeline:

# Get recent pipeline runs
runs = client.list_pipeline_runs(
    pipeline_name_or_id="daily_data_pipeline",
    sort_by="created",
    descending=True,
    size=5
)

print("Recent pipeline runs:")
for run in runs.items:
    print(f"Run ID: {run.id}")
    print(f"Created at: {run.creation_time}")
    print(f"Status: {run.status}")
    print("---")

Monitoring with Alerters

For critical pipelines, add alerting to notify you of failures via a failure hook:

from zenml.hooks import alerter_failure_hook
from zenml import pipeline, step

# Add failure alerting to critical steps
@step(on_failure=alerter_failure_hook)
def critical_step():
    # Step logic here
    pass

@pipeline()
def monitored_pipeline():
    critical_step()
    # Other steps

This assumes you've registered an alerter (like Slack or Discord) in your active stack.

Step 6: Clean Up

When you're done with a scheduled pipeline, proper cleanup is essential to prevent unexpected executions. The cleanup process depends on your orchestrator:

• Kubernetes orchestrator: ZenML handles everything automatically - deleting the schedule in ZenML also deletes the CronJob from the cluster
• Most other orchestrators (including Vertex AI): You must perform two separate deletion operations:

  1. Delete the schedule from ZenML's database
  2. Manually delete the schedule from the underlying orchestrator

Since this tutorial uses Vertex AI, we'll demonstrate the two-step manual cleanup process.

Step 6.1: Delete the Schedule from ZenML

First, let's delete the schedule from ZenML. By default, deletion archives the schedule (soft delete), which preserves references in historical pipeline runs:

# Archive the schedule (soft delete - preserves historical references)
client.delete_schedule("daily-data-processing")

# Verify deletion from ZenML
schedules = client.list_schedules()
if not any(s.name == "daily-data-processing" for s in schedules):
    print("Schedule archived successfully in ZenML!")
else:
    print("Schedule still exists in ZenML!")

Using the CLI, you can also perform a hard delete if you want to permanently remove all references:

# Soft delete (archive) - default behavior
zenml pipeline schedule delete daily-data-processing

# Hard delete - permanently removes all references
zenml pipeline schedule delete daily-data-processing --hard

Step 6.2: Delete the Schedule from the Orchestrator (Required for Vertex AI)

CRITICAL for Vertex AI and similar orchestrators: Deleting a schedule from ZenML does NOT automatically delete it from the orchestrator. If you only perform Step 6.1, your pipeline will continue to run on schedule! (Note: The Kubernetes orchestrator is an exception - it handles orchestrator-side deletion automatically.)

Here's how to delete the schedule from Vertex AI:

from google.cloud import aiplatform

# List all Vertex schedules matching our schedule name
vertex_schedules = aiplatform.PipelineJobSchedule.list(
    filter='display_name="daily-data-processing"',
    location="us-central1" # insert your location here
)

# Delete matching schedules
for schedule in vertex_schedules:
    print(f"Deleting Vertex schedule: {schedule.display_name}")
    schedule.delete()
    
# Verify deletion from Vertex
remaining_schedules = aiplatform.PipelineJobSchedule.list(
    filter='display_name="daily-data-processing"',
    location="us-central1"
)
if not list(remaining_schedules):
    print("Schedule successfully deleted from Vertex AI!")
else:
    print("Warning: Schedule still exists in Vertex AI!")

The procedure for deleting schedules varies by orchestrator. Always check your orchestrator's documentation for the correct deletion method.

Troubleshooting: Quick Fixes for Common Issues

Here are some practical fixes for issues you might encounter with your scheduled pipelines:

Issue: Timezone Confusion with Scheduled Runs

A common issue with scheduled pipelines is timezone confusion. Here's how ZenML handles timezone information:

1. If you provide a timezone-aware datetime, ZenML will use it as is
2. If you provide a datetime without timezone information, ZenML assumes it's in your local timezone and converts it to UTC for storage and communication with orchestrators

For cloud orchestrators like Vertex AI, Kubeflow, and Airflow, schedules typically run in the orchestrator's timezone, which is usually UTC. This can lead to confusion if you expect a schedule to run at 9 AM in your local timezone but it runs at 9 AM UTC instead.

To ensure your schedule runs at the expected time:

from datetime import datetime, timezone
import pytz
from zenml.config.schedule import Schedule

# Option 1: Explicitly use your local timezone (recommended)
local_tz = pytz.timezone('America/Los_Angeles')  # Replace with your timezone
local_time = local_tz.localize(datetime(2025, 1, 1, 9, 0))  # 9 AM in your timezone
schedule = Schedule(
    name="local-time-schedule",
    cron_expression="0 9 * * *",
    start_time=local_time  # ZenML will convert to UTC internally
)

# Option 2: Use UTC explicitly for clarity
utc_time = datetime(2025, 1, 1, 17, 0, tzinfo=timezone.utc)  # 5 PM UTC = 9 AM PST
schedule = Schedule(
    name="utc-time-schedule",
    cron_expression="0 17 * * *",  # Using UTC time in cron expression
    start_time=utc_time
)

# To verify how ZenML interprets your times:
from zenml.utils.time_utils import to_utc_timezone, to_local_tz
print(f"Schedule will start at: {schedule.start_time} (as stored by ZenML)")
print(f"In UTC that's: {to_utc_timezone(schedule.start_time)}")
print(f"In your local time that's: {to_local_tz(schedule.start_time)}")

Remember that cron expressions themselves don't have timezone information - they're interpreted in the timezone of the system executing them (which for cloud orchestrators is usually UTC).

Issue: Schedule Doesn't Run at the Expected Time

If your pipeline doesn't run when scheduled:

# Verify the cron expression with the croniter library
import datetime
from croniter import croniter

# Check if expression is valid
cron_expression = "0 9 * * *"
is_valid = croniter.is_valid(cron_expression)
print(f"Is cron expression valid? {is_valid}")

# Calculate the next run times to verify
base = datetime.datetime.now()
iter = croniter(cron_expression, base)
next_runs = [iter.get_next(datetime.datetime) for _ in range(3)]
print("Next 3 scheduled runs:")
for run_time in next_runs:
    print(f"  {run_time}")

For Vertex AI specifically, verify that your service account has the required permissions:

# Check permissions on your service account
gcloud projects get-iam-policy your-project-id \
  --filter="bindings.members:serviceAccount:[e-mail]"

Issue: Orphaned Schedules in the Orchestrator

To clean up orphaned Vertex AI schedules:

from google.cloud import aiplatform

# List all Vertex schedules
vertex_schedules = aiplatform.PipelineJobSchedule.list(
    filter='display_name="daily-data-processing"',
    location="us-central1" # insert your location here
)

# Delete orphaned schedules
for schedule in vertex_schedules:
    print(f"Deleting Vertex schedule: {schedule.display_name}")
    schedule.delete()

Issue: Finding Failing Scheduled Runs

When scheduled runs fail silently:

# Find failed runs in the last 24 hours
from zenml.client import Client
import datetime

client = Client()
yesterday = datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone.utc) - datetime.timedelta(days=1)

# Get recent runs with status filtering
failed_runs = client.list_pipeline_runs(
    pipeline_name_or_id="daily_data_pipeline",
    sort_by="created",
    descending=True,
    size=10
)

# Print failed runs
print("Recent failed runs:")
for run in failed_runs.items:
    if run.status == "failed" and run.creation_time > yesterday:
        print(f"Run ID: {run.id}")
        print(f"Created at: {run.creation_time}")
        print(f"Status: {run.status}")
        print("---")

Next Steps

Now that you understand the basics of managing scheduled pipelines, you can:

1. Create more complex schedules with various cron expressions for different business needs
2. Set up monitoring and alerting to be notified when scheduled runs fail
3. Optimize resource allocation for your scheduled pipelines
4. Implement data-dependent scheduling where pipelines trigger based on data availability

For more advanced schedule management and monitoring techniques, check out theZenML documentation.