Create a maintenance window (console) - Amazon Systems Manager
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Create a maintenance window (console)

In this procedure, you create a maintenance window in Maintenance Windows, a capability of Amazon Systems Manager. You can specify its basic options, such as name, schedule, and duration. In later steps, you choose the targets, or resources, that it updates and the tasks that run when the maintenance window runs.

Note

For an explanation of how the various schedule-related options for maintenance windows relate to one another, see Maintenance window scheduling and active period options.

For more information about working with the --schedule option, see Reference: Cron and rate expressions for Systems Manager.

To create a maintenance window (console)
  1. Open the Amazon Systems Manager console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/systems-manager/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Maintenance Windows.

  3. Choose Create maintenance window.

  4. For Name, enter a descriptive name to help you identify this maintenance window.

  5. (Optional) For Description, enter a description to identify how this maintenance window will be used.

  6. (Optional) If you want to allow a maintenance window task to run on managed nodes, even if you haven't registered those nodes as targets, choose Allow unregistered targets.

    If you choose this option, then you can choose the unregistered nodes (by node ID) when you register a task with the maintenance window.

    If you don't choose this option, then you must choose previously registered targets when you register a task with the maintenance window.

  7. Specify a schedule for the maintenance window by using one of the three scheduling options.

    For information about building cron/rate expressions, see Reference: Cron and rate expressions for Systems Manager.

  8. For Duration, enter the number of hours the maintenance window will run. The value you specify determines the specific end time for the maintenance window based on the time it begins. No maintenance window tasks are permitted to start after the resulting endtime minus the number of hours you specify for Stop initiating tasks in the next step.

    For example, if the maintenance window starts at 3 PM, the duration is three hours, and the Stop initiating tasks value is one hour, no maintenance window tasks can start after 5 PM.

  9. For Stop initiating tasks, enter the number of hours before the end of the maintenance window that the system should stop scheduling new tasks to run.

  10. (Optional) For Window start date, specify a date and time, in ISO-8601 Extended format, for when you want the maintenance window to become active. This allows you to delay activation of the maintenance window until the specified future date.

  11. (Optional) For Window end date, specify a date and time, in ISO-8601 Extended format, for when you want the maintenance window to become inactive. This allows you to set a date and time in the future after which the maintenance window no longer runs.

  12. (Optional) For Schedule timezone, specify the time zone to use as the basis for when scheduled maintenance windows run, in Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) format. For example: "America/Los_Angeles", "etc/UTC", or "Asia/Seoul".

    For more information about valid formats, see the Time Zone Database on the IANA website.

  13. (Optional) For Schedule offset, enter the number of days to wait after the date and time specified by a cron or rate expression before running the maintenance window. You can specify between one and six days.

    Note

    This option is available only if you specified a schedule by entering a cron or rate expression manually.

  14. (Optional) In the Manage tags area, apply one or more tag key name/value pairs to the maintenance window.

    Tags are optional metadata that you assign to a resource. Tags allow you to categorize a resource in different ways, such as by purpose, owner, or environment. For example, you might want to tag a maintenance window to identify the type of tasks it runs, the types of targets, and the environment it runs in. In this case, you could specify the following key name/value pairs:

    • Key=TaskType,Value=AgentUpdate

    • Key=OS,Value=Windows

    • Key=Environment,Value=Production

  15. Choose Create maintenance window. The system returns you to the maintenance window page. The state of the maintenance window you just created is Enabled.