Several cron implementations (including the default in Red Hat-derived distributions) have a built-in RANDOM_DELAY variable you can set. I prefer setting the r

Several cron implementations (including the default in Red Hat-derived distributions) have a built-in RANDOM_DELAY variable you can set. I prefer setting the random offset when writing/deploying the crontab (you probably have them committed somewhere so there's bound to be a deployment mechanism, such as ansible). This way the offset is kept constant, while still avoiding the "thundering" cron.