Before you begin
- The operations.maintenance_windows.view permission to open the page
- To create, edit, cancel or delete a window: the administrator role plus the operations.maintenance_windows.manage permission
Two kinds of maintenance window
This article covers maintenance windows for your Azure Virtual Desktop host pools, under Settings → Maintenance Windows. Atlas Reach has its own, separate maintenance windows under Atlas Reach → Maintenance. Those decide when Atlas Reach may deploy software, install Windows Updates or reboot a managed device, and they come with blackouts and maintenance mode. A window on one page has no effect on the other, so if you patch session hosts with Atlas Reach jobs, set up a window on both pages.
Open the page
In the sidebar, open Settings → Maintenance Windows. Summary cards show the total number of windows, how many are active, how many are scheduled, and how many active windows are suppressing alerts. Below them, the list shows each window's name, status, start and end time, host pools, and whether it suppresses alerts and pauses autoscale. Search by name or description, or filter by status (Scheduled, Active, Completed or Canceled) and by date range.
Create a window
- Click New Window. The Create Maintenance Window form opens.
- Under Start with a template, pick Patch Tuesday, Monthly Reboot or Image Refresh Cycle to fill in the form, or click Or create custom to start blank.
- Enter a Window Name and, optionally, a Description of the work.
- Under Host Pools, tick the pools the window covers. Select all ticks every pool, and the counter shows how many are selected.
- Set the Start Time and End Time. The end must be after the start.
- Choose a Recurrence: One-time, Daily, Weekly or Monthly.
- Set the toggles and the Pre-Maintenance Notification (see below), then click Create.
Suppression and the autoscale pause apply only to the host pools you tick. A window with no host pools selected still notifies your admins, but it holds no alerts and pauses nothing.
The templates
- Patch Tuesday: the monthly Windows Update reboot cycle. It starts at midnight on the next second Tuesday of the month, lasts 4 hours and repeats monthly.
- Monthly Reboot: a routine monthly session host reboot. It lasts 2 hours and repeats monthly.
- Image Refresh Cycle: a one-time 8-hour window for a rolling golden image refresh.
Every template turns on Suppress Alerts and Pause Autoscale. A template only fills in the form, so you can change any field before you click Create.
Times, time zones and recurrence
- Start and end times are entered on your tenant's display time zone, which is shown under the two fields. This is not necessarily your browser's time zone.
- A recurring window keeps its local start and end time through daylight saving changes.
- The next instance of a recurring window is created when the current one completes, so the list shows one upcoming instance at a time.
- Daily and weekly windows repeat on the next day or the same weekday. Monthly windows repeat on the same day of the month as the first window. In a shorter month they move to the month's last day.
Because a monthly window repeats on a date, not a weekday, a window created from the Patch Tuesday template does not stay on the second Tuesday in later months. After each Patch Tuesday window completes, check the date of the next instance and edit it if needed.
What the toggles do
- Suppress Alerts: holds non-critical alerts from the window's host pools while the window is active, such as performance thresholds and session hosts dropping offline, so patch reboots do not page anyone.
- Pause Autoscale: stops scaling operations on the window's host pools while the window is active, including Adaptive Density changes, so Atlas does not start, stop or resize hosts you are working on.
- Notify Admins: sends notifications by email to your administrators and to your configured Microsoft Teams and Slack webhooks. Admins hear when the window is about to start, when it starts, and when it completes.
- Pre-Maintenance Notification: how many hours before the start the advance notice goes out, from 0 to 720. The default is 24. Set it to 0 to skip the advance notice.
The two suppression toggles are independent. For example, you can pause autoscale but keep alerts flowing. Both lift as soon as the window completes or is canceled.
The maintenance banner and acknowledgements
Once a window is inside its pre-maintenance notification period, and for as long as it is active, everyone signed in to the portal sees a banner at the top of the page. The banner names the window, when it starts or ends, and how many host pools it affects. Click Acknowledge to confirm you have seen it, or dismiss the banner. While a window is active, you can also click Acknowledge in its details. The details list who has acknowledged the window and when.
Manage windows
- View details: click a window to see its schedule, duration, affected host pools, suppression settings, admin notifications, acknowledgements and, once it has completed, its health report.
- Edit: only scheduled windows can be edited, from the list or the details.
- Cancel: ends a scheduled or active window straight away. Alerts and autoscale go back to normal on its host pools. Canceling a recurring window also ends the series, because the next instance is only created when a window completes.
- Delete: removes a scheduled, completed or canceled window permanently. To delete an active window, cancel it first.
The post-maintenance health report
When a window completes, Atlas checks that each of its host pools is still there and resolves the alerts that were held during the window on those pools. The Post-Maintenance Health Report in the window's details shows the result (Passed, Degraded or Failed), the number of checks passed and failed, how many alerts were auto-resolved, and the result of each check. If Notify Admins is on, the completed notification includes the same summary.