scala - Service with background jobs, how to ensure jobs only run periodically ONCE per cluster -

i have play framework based service stateless , intended deployed across many machines horizontal scaling.

this service handling http json requests , responses, , using couchdb data store again maximum scalability.

we have small number of background jobs need run every x seconds across whole cluster. vital jobs not execute concurrently on each machine.

to execute jobs we're using actors , akka scheduler (since we're using scala):

akka.system().scheduler.schedule(     duration.create(0, timeunit.milliseconds),         duration.create(10, timeunit.seconds),         akka.system().actorof(loggingjob.props),         "tick") 

(etc)

object loggingjob {     def props = props[loggingjob] }  class loggingjob extends untypedactor {     override def onreceive(message: any) {         logger.info("job executed! " + message.tostring())     } } 

is there:

• any built in trickery in akka/actors/play i've missed me?
• or recognised algorithm can put on top of couchbase (distributed mutex? not quite?) this?

i not want make of instances 'special' needs simple deploy , manage.

check out akka's cluster singleton pattern.

for use cases convenient , mandatory ensure have 1 actor of type running somewhere in cluster.

some examples:

• single point of responsibility cluster-wide consistent decisions, or coordination of actions across cluster system
• single entry point external system
• single master, many workers
• centralized naming service, or routing logic

using singleton should not first design choice. has several drawbacks, such single-point of bottleneck. single-point of failure relevant concern, cases feature takes care of making sure singleton instance started.