KB-2248 How to configure Default Maintenance Windows

Purpose

There are a variety of reasons why you may want to restart your Appian environments, such as routine security patching, resetting memory usage and applying hotfixes. The Default Maintenance Windows feature aims to streamline this process by giving you more control and minimizing the need to communicate with Appian Support. This article serves to outline the benefits of this feature as well as how to use it for your sites. 

 Benefits of this feature

• More streamlined: You can directly select pre-approved maintenance items, reducing the back-and-forths spent on approvals and scheduling. 
• Increased flexibility: You can configure a range of pre-approved time frames for maintenance items scheduled by Appian Support, enabling these to occur during a time that suits your needs. Configuring these times in advance makes it easier to manage downtime across all sites.
• Enhanced security: Your sites can be more quickly patched with our latest security updates (when applicable), better ensuring the safety of your data.

Instructions 

Below is an example of how default maintenance windows can be configured for your sites. Note that:

• dev.mysite.com can be restarted Monday to Wednesday any time from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm ET.
• Multiple default windows can be configured for a site, such as test.mysite.com which has two entries.

You can set your default maintenance windows in two different ways:

Option 1:

1. Navigate to a support case for the account that you would like to schedule default maintenance windows for. Note: This can be for any existing support case.
2. Select "Related Actions" then "Update Default Maintenance Windows".
3. Configure default windows as desired. Certain validations will guide you through what you can and cannot select based on your environment level and support tier.
4. Select "Submit". 
5. If at any time you would like to either edit, remove, or add additional windows, navigate back to the related action.

Option 2:

1. Navigate to the "Support" tab of MyAppian.
2. Select "Accounts" and choose the organization for the sites you want to set a default window for. If you already configured default windows you will see them here, otherwise the grid will be blank.
3. To set new default maintenance windows, select "Related Actions" then "Update Default Maintenance Windows".
4. Configure default windows as desired and select "Submit". Your edits will be populated back on the Accounts summary page.

Disclaimers

• You must be a support contact to use this feature.
• All scheduled maintenance windows will still be communicated through support cases and emails. By selecting default maintenance windows, you are giving permission for Appian Support to restart your environments during those times.
• A longer default window does not indicate longer downtime. By default, maintenance will be scheduled for 2 hours and occur any time within your selected range.
• The day of a window that is selected for a start time in the afternoon and an end time in the early morning will be associated with the start time. For example, if you select Monday from 10:00 pm to 2:00 am, that window will start on Monday at 10:00 pm and end on Tuesday at 2:00 am.

Affected Versions

This article applies to all versions of Appian Cloud.

Last Reviewed: January 2024