How are Operational Maintenance Events Performed on the Cloud

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NOTE: This article applies only to Operational Maintenance Events. For information on Software Upgrade events, see How are Software Upgrades performed on the Cloud. Backup Upgrade events are described in Cloud Backup - How Scheduled Maintenance is Performed.

Operational maintenance events affect the underlying infrastructure of Cloud (i.e. network, storage, virtualization). Such events occur on Friday nights local time, though the specific time varies depending on the Geographic Region. These windows remain at the same local time based on the Region's use of daylight savings time, so the UTC times will vary during the year. The current schedule is:

• Australia: 09:00 PM Australia Eastern Daylight (10:00 UTC)
• Canberra: 09:30 PM Australia Eastern Daylight (10:30 UTC)
• Asia-Pacific: 09:00 PM Japan Standard Time (12:00 UTC)
• Africa: 08:00 PM South Africa Standard Time (18:00 UTC)
• Europe: 09:00 PM Central European Standard (20:00 UTC)
• Canada: Friday 9:00 PM Eastern Standard / 06:00 PM Pacific Standard (Saturday 02:00 UTC)
• North America: Saturday 12:00 AM US Eastern Standard / Friday 09:00 PM Pacific Standard (Saturday 05:00 UTC)

There are several different types of operational maintenance events that may occur:

Operational Maintenance events involve upgrades and improvements made to the underlying Network, VMware, or Storage infrastructure. These events do not have any downtime or significant impact to existing Cloud Networks or Cloud Servers and last one hour or less in duration. Such maintenance events fall into two types:

1. Non-Impacting Operational Maintenance events do not involve any downtime of any part of the service but may have brief impacts on performance during the maintenance event. 
2. Impacting Operational Maintenance events occur when we are making upgrades to the Network or Storage infrastructure. These events do not involve any downtime to existing Cloud Networks and Servers. However, the Admin UI/API will be unavailable during the maintenance window in order to prevent changes being made to the underlying environment during the window. 

VMware Maintenance Events occur when we are making upgrades to the underlying vSphere platform. These events do not involve any downtime to the CloudControl UI/API or to existing Cloud Networks and Servers. However, they do require suspension of all Cloud Server-related management functions through the Cloud UI and API. For details on this suspension, see What is a VMware Maintenance Event. 

Major Maintenance Events occur very rarely. These events are defined as any change that will extend beyond the normal, allotted window and/or results in downtime or has a significant impact to CloudControl availability, existing Cloud Networks or Cloud Servers. For major operational maintenance, we will provide at least 2 weeks notice.

Emergency Maintenance is defined as an extraordinary event required to immediately address an issue that affects the security and/or availability of the entire Cloud infrastructure in a Geographic region. These events may occur outside of the windows listed above. Should such an event occur, we will provide as much prior notice as possible.

Note the specific methodology for notifying customers in advance of such events varies by Cloud Provider. However, the UI will reflect details of such events as described in How do I Identify if the System is in Maintenance in the UI and Cloud API.