What do I need to know about the Amazon RDS maintenance window?

Resolution

During the maintenance window, Amazon RDS applies updates to hardware, the underlying operating system (OS), or the database engine minor version. Amazon RDS also applies DB instance modifications that you didn't immediately apply. Certain maintenance operations, such as OS updates and database patching, cause downtime on your DB instance. To minimize the downtime during maintenance operations, use a Multi-AZ DB instance deployment.

Configure notifications for maintenance actions

To configure notifications for upcoming maintenance actions on your DB instance, take the following actions:

• Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic, and then subscribe to an Amazon RDS event notification.
• Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that notifies you of AWS Health events for Amazon RDS resources in your AWS account.
  Note: When you create the rule, in the Event pattern section, choose Relational Database Service (RDS) for AWS service and RDS DB Instance Event for Event type.

Note: Review the DB instances that are scheduled for hardware maintenance on the Open and recent issues tab on your AWS Health Dashboard. For more information, see the maintenance notification email that's sent to your account.

List pending maintenance actions

Note: If you receive errors when you run AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands, then see Troubleshooting errors for the AWS CLI. Also, make sure that you're using the most recent AWS CLI version.

To check whether a maintenance update is available for your DB instance, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Amazon RDS console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Databases.
3. Choose the Settings icon.
4. Under Column preferences, turn on Maintenance, and then choose Confirm.
5. Review the Maintenance column for one of the following values:
   required: Amazon RDS automatically applies the maintenance action to the resource. You can't indefinitely defer the action.
   available: The maintenance action is available, but Amazon RDS doesn't automatically apply the action to the resource. You can manually apply it.
   next window: Amazon RDS automatically applies the action to the resource during the next maintenance window.
   in progress: Amazon RDS is applying the action to the resource.

To view the pending maintenance actions for your DB instance, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Amazon RDS console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Databases.
3. Select your DB instance.
4. Choose the Maintenance & backups tab.
5. Under the Pending maintenance section, view the list of pending maintenance actions.

Or, you can run the following describe-pending-maintenance-actions AWS CLI command to list pending maintenance actions:

aws rds describe-pending-maintenance-actions --region example-region-name

Note: Replace example-region-name with your AWS Region.

Change the maintenance window

The maintenance window occurs during the time of lowest usage and requires occasional modification.

When you change the maintenance window for a DB instance, downtime doesn't always occur. However, if you change the maintenance window when you scheduled pending modification actions, then Amazon RDS immediately applies the modifications and downtime might occur.

To delay a maintenance action that's scheduled for the next maintenance window, change the maintenance window of your DB instance to the next possible window.

Important: If you continuously change the maintenance window to avoid downtime, then Amazon RDS might apply maintenance actions at a time of high usage. This might cause an outage.

Defer maintenance actions

You can't defer a maintenance action that's already started. However, you can defer a maintenance action that's scheduled for the next maintenance window. If you set the Maintenance value to next window, then the option to defer is available.

Complete the following steps:

1. Open the Amazon RDS console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Databases.
3. Select your DB instance.
4. Choose Actions, and then choose Defer upgrade.

Related information

Modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance