Maintenance Windows

Maintenance windows let you schedule planned downtime without triggering alerts. When a maintenance window is active, PixoMonitor pauses checks for the specified monitor and suppresses any alerts that would normally fire.

Why Use Maintenance Windows?

During planned maintenance, you don't want to:

Wake up on-call engineers with false alerts
Clutter your incident history with expected downtime
Send confusing notifications to status page subscribers

Maintenance windows solve these problems by temporarily pausing monitoring during known maintenance periods.

Creating a Maintenance Window

Navigate to Maintenance Windows

Go to Maintenance in the sidebar and click Schedule Maintenance.

Select the monitor

Choose which monitor this maintenance window applies to. Each maintenance window is for a single monitor.

Set the time window

Enter:

Title — Description of the maintenance (e.g., "Database upgrade")
Start Time — When maintenance begins
End Time — When maintenance ends

Use ISO 8601 format or the datetime picker.

Create

Click Create. The maintenance window is now scheduled.

The end time must be after the start time. PixoMonitor validates this before creating the maintenance window.

Maintenance Window Statuses

Maintenance windows progress through these statuses:

Status	Description
Scheduled	Future maintenance, not yet active
In Progress	Currently active, monitoring paused
Completed	Maintenance ended normally
Cancelled	Maintenance was cancelled before completion

Automatic Status Changes

Scheduled → In Progress: When the current time reaches the start time
In Progress → Completed: When the current time reaches the end time

What Happens During Maintenance

When a maintenance window is active:

Monitoring Behavior

Checks are paused — The monitor doesn't run scheduled checks
No data collection — No uptime/response time data during the window
Status preserved — Monitor's last known status is maintained

Alert Behavior

Alerts suppressed — No notifications sent for this monitor
Escalations paused — No escalation triggers during maintenance
Subscribers not notified — Status page updates are suppressed

Status Page Behavior

Monitor shows "Under Maintenance" — Clear indication to users
Planned maintenance notice — Users understand the downtime is expected

Cancelling Maintenance

If maintenance completes early or gets postponed, cancel the window:

Find the maintenance window

Go to Maintenance and find the window you want to cancel.

Cancel

Click the Cancel button on the maintenance window.

Monitoring resumes

The monitor immediately resumes normal operation.

Cancel maintenance windows as soon as your work is complete. This ensures monitoring resumes immediately rather than waiting for the scheduled end time.

Deleting Maintenance Windows

Delete a maintenance window to remove it from history:

Go to Maintenance
Find the window to delete
Click Delete

You can delete any maintenance window (scheduled, completed, or cancelled). This removes it from your maintenance history.

Viewing Maintenance History

The Maintenance page shows all maintenance windows:

Upcoming — Scheduled future maintenance
Active — Currently in progress
Past — Completed and cancelled maintenance

Information Displayed

For each maintenance window:

Title/description
Associated monitor name
Start and end times
Current status
Created by (user)

Current Limitations

Per-Monitor Only

Maintenance windows apply to a single monitor. To schedule maintenance affecting multiple monitors, create separate maintenance windows for each.

One-Time Only

Maintenance windows are currently one-time events. For recurring maintenance (e.g., weekly restart windows), you'll need to create new windows each time.

Recurring maintenance windows are on the roadmap. For now, create individual windows for each maintenance period.

No Automatic Announcements

Maintenance windows don't automatically create status page announcements. To inform users about scheduled maintenance:

Create an Announcement with the maintenance details
Schedule the announcement to display during the maintenance period

Maintenance vs. Pausing Monitors

Both maintenance windows and pausing stop monitoring, but they serve different purposes:

Feature	Maintenance Window	Paused Monitor
Scheduled	Yes, specific time range	No, manual toggle
Auto-resumes	Yes, at end time	No, must manually resume
Shows on status page	Shows "Under Maintenance"	Shows "Paused"
Purpose	Planned maintenance	Temporary disable
History tracked	Yes, with start/end times	No

Use maintenance windows for scheduled, time-bound maintenance activities.

Use pause/resume for indefinitely stopping monitoring (e.g., decommissioning, development).

Best Practices

Schedule in advance — Create maintenance windows before the maintenance starts
Use descriptive titles — "Database upgrade v2.3.1" is better than "Maintenance"
Buffer time — Add extra time at the end in case maintenance runs long
Cancel when done — Resume monitoring immediately when maintenance completes
Communicate — Create announcements so users know about planned downtime
Track history — Keep maintenance records for compliance and review

Example Workflow

Planned Database Upgrade

Plan the maintenance

Decide on maintenance timing: Saturday 2:00 AM - 4:00 AM

Create announcement

Go to Status Page → Announcements and create:

Title: "Scheduled Database Maintenance"
Type: Maintenance
Schedule: Saturday 2:00 AM - 4:00 AM
Content: Details about the maintenance

Create maintenance window

Go to Maintenance and create a window for your database monitor:

Title: "Database upgrade to v2.3.1"
Start: Saturday 2:00 AM
End: Saturday 4:00 AM

Perform maintenance

When the window becomes active, monitoring pauses automatically.

Complete maintenance

If done early, cancel the maintenance window to resume monitoring immediately. Otherwise, monitoring resumes automatically at 4:00 AM.

For critical maintenance, consider having someone monitor the status page manually during the window to catch any issues that might occur after monitoring resumes.