How to handle daylight savings in cron jobs

I don't know how Cron does it, but here's Microsoft's take on the problem with Task Scheduler.

Spring Forward

There are several possible ways that a scheduler program might behave for tasks that are scheduled in the time void that is caused by the SF transition:

• Method 1: Because those minutes do not appear for that day in that time zone, the scheduler may ignore any tasks that are scheduled to occur during those minutes. This behavior may be appropriate for some applications; the scheduler does not prevent those times from being placed in the schedule.

• Method 2: Start those tasks at the actual time that they would have been started, had DST not occurred. For example, a task that is scheduled to occur at 2:05 that morning would actually run at 3:05 DST. This approach may be useful for tasks that must be staggered and sequenced. However, this approach may cause one task to run after another task that is dependent on the first task. For example, if one task is scheduled at 2:30, and a followup task is scheduled at 3:15, the 3:15 task may run first, followed by the 2:30 task, which would now run at 3:30.

• Method 3: Compress time, and then run any missed tasks in the order that they were scheduled to run at some time after the transition. This behavior keeps tasks in order. However, if several tasks are scheduled during the SF time void, they appear to start almost simultaneously. Any interdependencies that require specific timing and sequence might cause failures of steps in the task. This appears to be the method that the latest Microsoft scheduler uses.

Fall Back

The following are several ways that a scheduler program might behave for tasks that are scheduled during FB, when time repeats:

• Method 1: Because the time repeats, do the task again each moment that the scheduled time occurs. This does not appear to be a common requirement; however, this behavior might be appropriate for some applications.

• Method 2: Start those tasks at the actual time that they would have started had DST not occurred. For example, a task that is scheduled for 2:05 that morning runs at the 1:05 standard time, which is the second 1:05 wall-clock time.

• Method 3: Start the tasks at the scheduled wall-clock hour. This behavior delays any tasks that are scheduled to start at 2:00 DST on that date for one hour, but all tasks beyond that time occur in the sequence and at the actual time interval that you want. The latest Microsoft scheduler appears to use this method. However, tasks that are scheduled to occur exactly at the transition moment may run at that moment. For example, a task that is scheduled to occur at 2:00 a.m. might run at 1:00 a.m. standard time (as in method 2).

This answer indicates Windows Task Scheduler 'New Trigger' window has a checkbox Synchronize across time zones. When it's checked:

the task is scheduled by UTC only. (All times are still shown as local time, but are stored as UTC.)

So basically create the task, create the trigger, check that box, set the time, BE SURE to subtract the timezone difference for the current location of the machine running the task.

Ex: the task is being setup on a server in California which is PST (Pacific Standard Time) so UTC -8 so we'd add 8hr to California/PST time to get UTC time. Say I want this to run at 6pm in New York which is EST, itself UTC -5 meaning add 5hr to NY/EST to get UTC time; so 6pm would be 11pm UTC. So on the California server task we want it to be 11pm UTC, however the task shows California time, but we know California time is UTC -8 so we simply set task to start at 3pm. This is all providing that checkbox is as that user advises. I can't seem to find official Microsoft documentation on it. It's clearly very confusing