Maintenance windows

A maintenance window is a scheduled period. During the window ZeroDrop continues to monitor, but it holds back the notifications. When you expect a check to fail on purpose, use a window. Examples are a deploy, a database migration, and a planned outage at a provider.

Why a window is better than a disabled check

A disabled check stops all probes. You lose the data for that period, and you must remember to enable the check again. A maintenance window keeps the check active, so you still get the latency history and can see what happened. The window only suppresses the alerts, so nobody is paged for expected downtime.

Schedule a window

On the Maintenance page, create a window with a start time and an end time.

• ZeroDrop reads the times in the timezone of your account. Set the timezone on the Settings page.
• A window can start in the future. You can therefore schedule it before a planned change.

While the current time is inside an active window, ZeroDrop suppresses the notifications. When the window ends, normal alerts continue.

Effect on uptime

A maintenance window also keeps expected downtime out of the uptime figure of a check. ZeroDrop credits back the time that a check spends in an incident that overlaps a window. Your 30-day uptime and the public uptime badge therefore do not decrease for a planned change.

The credit applies only where an incident and a window overlap. A window with no outage under it changes nothing, and downtime outside a window still counts.

You can create a window after the event. ZeroDrop then credits the overlapping downtime retroactively. This is useful when an outage was in fact planned, or when you forgot to schedule the window in advance.

CAUTION: The uptime badge is public. A window with a start time in the past changes the number that your visitors see.

After the window

When a window closes, ZeroDrop evaluates the check against its live results as usual. If the service is healthy again, ZeroDrop sends no alert. If the service is still down, ZeroDrop notifies you as normal. The window covers only the period that you scheduled.

You can delete a window at any time. The console asks you to confirm first.