Vinzant Software announces realease GECS Version 4.80
Vinzant Software announces release of GECS version 4.80. This release contains a new Web Client Administrator as a welcomed enhancement for remote users with easier navigation and a look and feel much more like the GECS Windows Client Administrator. Additionally, the support for SSH Agents, FTP security enhancements and new export utilities are included.

Vinzant Software announces release GECS Version 4.7
Vinzant Software announced today that version on 4.7 of GECS has been released today. Some of the major enhancements include support for Service Level Agreements with an SLA Monitor, FTP Proxy support, SQL Variables, comparison dependencies and much more.

Vinzant Software announces release GECS Version 4.6
Vinzant Software announced the release of GECS version 4.6 today. Some of the major enhancements include a new SAP job type, rescheduling based from the batch detail information, job templates, direct support for SQL Server® and Oracle® job types and improved email support. There have also been many enhancements to the browser-based clients

GECS Not Affected by Heartbleed Bug
The recently announced Heartbleed bug doesn't affect Global ECS. The only GECS component that uses OpenSSL is the Web Manager and it needs to be manually configured to do so. GECS uses v0.9.8 of OpenSSL which does not contain the bug that was introduced in v1.0.1

Vinzant Software Releases v4.50 of GECS
Vinzant Software announced today that version 4.50 of Global ECS has been released and is ready for download. Some of the major enhancements include new FTP and SQL job types, reusable credentials, a complete 64-bit version and an extended command line. There have also been many enhancements to the browser-based clients.

Vinzant Software Releases GECS 4.22
Released in April of 2012, Global ECS v4.22 is another minor release that contains a major enhancement. GECS batch jobs can now depend on jobs outside the batch. This will allow you to trigger jobs in a batch with jobs in another batch.

Vinzant Software Announces the Release of GECS 4.21
On February 13th, Vinzant Software released Global ECS v4.21. It is a minor relase that includes the length of GECS Batch Names being extended from a maximum of 20 characters to a maximum of 50 characters. Likewise, the maximum length of job names has been increased from 10 characters to 50 characters.

Global ECS Version 4.20 is Released
Vinzant Software has release Global ECS v4.20. Some of the many enhancements in this version included User-Defined Folders in GECS Administrator and Web Based Front-Ends, a 64 bit Windows Agent and 64 bit Job Types for Windows and new Global GECS Events and New GECS Job Statuses for better monitoring. and many more.

GECS Version 4.10 Has Been Released
Vinzant Software announced today that version 4.10 of Global ECS has been released and is ready for download. Some of the major enhancements include enhanced job views, metadata tags to allow freeform grouping of jobs for monitoring and editing purposes and an exportable aggregate job history report. There have also been many performance improvements made to the System engine. Version 4.10 does require a complete component upgrade including the GECS System, Agents on all platforms and client front-ends.

GECS v4.01 Nears End of Beta Testing
GECS v4.01 is in the final stages of beta testing and is just weels away from being released. Some of the major enhancements included are AD authentication, additional job statuses, enhanced auditing, Windows Event and CPU utilization triggers and Agent support for Mac OS X. If you would like to get an early preview of the new version, please contact the GECS Sales Team at sales@vinzantsoftware.com.

New Features Announced for GECS v4.01
Enhancements for the next version of Global ECS® are nearly complete. Vinzant Software interviewed many end users which helped shape the plans for version GECS® 4.01. The list of features and changes includes:

[+/-] 1) The elimination of Instance Numbers.

The unique identifier for a job will once again be the batch, job number and ‘submitted date/time’ (SDT). When jobs are ‘submitted’ via Administrator, the SDT will be added automatically. As jobs and batches reschedule, a new SDT will be created that will distinguish the uniqueness of each job run.

GECS is reverting back to the way data for jobs was stored in pre-3.5 versions. The jobs table will only store the job definition and schedule. Each time a job executes, the history of the run will be stored in the new job history table. This change, combined with the elimination of instance numbers, will create a much more efficient, clean and intuitive production environment.

Improvements have been made to the audits that are currently captured. GECS will now capture field level changes when a record is edited. GECS will store who made the change, when it was made as well as the new and old values for the field that was changed. Optionally, you will be able to require end users to record the reason for the change at the time it is made.

Job history will automatically move to an archive file. Settings can be customized to determine how much data to keep in the GECS archive.

In direct response to end user feedback, we have added more options for MS AD integration. GECS will now be able to authenticate against AD without making any schema changes. There will be five different levels of support for AD.

Currently GECS supports only four job ‘states’: Pending, On Hold, Running and Complete. GECS jobs will now have more descriptive job statuses including Late, Waiting Activation, On Ice and Overrunning Estimated Minutes. Job history will now include many more results than simply ‘Complete’. At a quick glance end users will be able to determine if a job was successful, failed, skipped or terminated by a user.

GECS will support a new job dependency based on the CPU utilization of the target machine for the job. This will allow end users to avoid server ‘overload’ and more intelligently launch jobs. The CPU utilization will be derived constantly based on the average usage for the last minute so that GECS can accurately assess available resources and account for spikes.
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Preparing for Daylight Saving Time
In August of 2005 the United States Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which changes the dates of both the start and end of daylight saving time (DST). When this law goes into effect in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November) than what had traditionally occurred. To make certain your computer changes the time when it should; you need to apply Microsoft updates. For more information about upgrading your Windows properly deal with the DST change, please proceed to:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_topissues#a2

How will these changes impact Global ECS?

By default GECS simply compares your system time to the time you scheduled your job for, if the jobs time is in the past, the job will run(assuming all other dependencies are met). When the time does change, GECS has a chance of generating some extra events depending on how your jobs are setup. To understand how this works, an example is in order. Let us assume that at 2:00 the time changes to 3:00 and we have a job scheduled for 2:15. When GECS looks at 1:59 for jobs to run it finds none. The next time it looks, the time is 3:00 and it sees a job scheduled for 2:15. GECS will mark this job as 'late' and run it as soon as it can. By default a 'late' job simply generates an event and will run normally when it's dependencies are met, however late jobs can skip and reschedule or launch other jobs depending on how they are setup. Another issue with the time jumping forward an hour is that you may jump into vacation periods or invalid times. The time change also means that some jobs are going to launch sooner than they would relative to other jobs, a job scheduled for 3:00 in our example will run a minute after a job scheduled for 1:59, so make sure your dependencies are set correctly. These oddities only affect jobs that are scheduled for the hour that gets skipped. Jobs may also appear to run one hour longer than normal. If a job starts prior to the time change and then completes after the time change, the jobs duration time will include the hour of ‘DST’ when the OS rolled the system time forward. This may cause job over run events and cause your job run times to appear skewed. If you have any questions or concerns, please email support@vinzantsoftware.com or call Global ECS Technical Support at 219.942.9544.
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Major GECS v4.0 Enhancements Announced
Today Vinzant Software announced the major enhancements that will be included in GECS v4.0. GECS v4.0 will include: ODBC support so you can use a SQL database with GECS, MS Active Directory support and real-time graphical job views. It is on target for a Q2 2007 release. The GECS v4.0 Beta Program will be announced soon.
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Status of GECS v3.6
Since August, there have been several packages release for v3.60 which include small enhancements and bug fixes. The newest package of GECS v3.60 was released December 7th, 2006. If you are not currently running the newest package of GECS we encourage you to upgrade to this release when possible.

Changes in 3.6 since August Release>>

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Vinzant Software Release v3.6
Vinzant Software announced today that version 3.6 of Global ECS has been released and is ready for download. Some of the major enhancements include a new Dashboard feature, job level lateness and improved job views. There have also been many performance improvements made to the System engine. Version 3.6 does require a complete component upgrade including the GECS System, Agents on all platforms and client front-ends.

Changes in 3.6 >>

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Vinzant Software Unveils New Website
Vinzant Software announced today that a complete rewrite of their website has been completed. This is part of their large scale rebranding effort that started in January. The new website was a complete rewrite from the ground up and includes Vinzant Software’s new corporate and product logos.
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Vinzant Software announces new 24x7x365 Support Program
Vinzant, Inc. announces a new 24x7x365 support program. The new support option includes a total of five off-hour support incidents that may be used to obtain technical support outside of normal support hours. A special phone number and authorization code will be provided so that end-users can obtain technical support 24x7x365.
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