US Patent 10083094 Objective based backup job scheduling

A method and apparatus for scheduling backup tasks on a source system specified by a backup job to meet a recovery point objective (RPO) specified for the backup job is presented. A method generally includes estimating resource utilization at the source system expected during a plurality of time periods based on historical resource utilization by jobs executed on the source system. The backup system estimates a time required to complete the backup tasks during each time period on the source system based on the estimated resource utilization for each time period and historical backup performance data. Upon determining that the estimated time required to complete the backup tasks for one or more of the time periods meets the RPO, the backup system schedules the backup tasks to be executed during a time period of the one or more time periods with the lowest estimated resource utilization.