How do you set an appropriate delay to each host when doing parallel testing?

Hi,

I have several hosts running the same keyword tests for an application (parallel testing) without interacting between each other. Some of the tests write the exact same data at the same time to a database and therefore, the tested application sees a conflict where the same data are in used/edited by another machine.

To avoid such conflict, I would like to add a different delay at the beginning of the execution of the tests on each host. Is that possible to configure the Network Suite, or a Job and indicate how much delay is needed to ensure that the same tests for writing are not executed at the same time?

I tried to add a random delay in the keyword tests directly, to minimize the probability that the conflict happens. Sometimes the random delays are too close to each other, which triggers the conflict.

This is the solution I came up with. Another solution is very welcome as well.

Thank you in advance

/Thomas