3. Maintenance Windows

Zenoss Maintenance Windows allow scheduled production state changes of a device or all devices in a System, Group, or Location. Maintenance Windows are defined on the Manage tab of these objects.

A Maintenance Window has a Start Time, Duration, Repeat Cycle and Start and End Production State. A typical Maintenance Window changes the Production State to Maintenance at its start, and to Production at its end. The Start Production State for the Maintenance Window is the state that the monitoring for the device (or group of devices) is in when the Maintenance Window begins or “opens”. For example, if your device(s) are running along in a Production State of “Production” (meaning you are monitoring and alerting on the devices normally) and the Maintenance Window opening time arrives, the Production State changes to the maintenance Window’s Start Production State.

For example, if the the Start Production State is set to Maintenance, this means you want monitoring and data collection to continue to occur for the device, but you don’t want alerts to occur or any warnings to appear on the dashboard. You can use this time to reboot the machine or make configuration changes that would normally create alerts and not have them actually send alerts. You can either schedule a Maintenance Window or change the Production State for the device manually at the time you want to make the changes. When the Maintenance window closes, the device(s) change to the End Production State for the Maintenance Window. You define the End Production State for the Maintenance Window. This refers to the Production State that you want the device(s) to revert to when the Maintenance Window ends. So the Start Production State is the state you want when the Maintenance Window opens - if I were setting up a Maintenance Window, I would define the window such that when its time for the Maintenance Window to occur, I want the Start Production State to be Maintenance, and then when the Maintenance Window time frame expires, I want the Stop Production State to be Production, meaning its back to monitoring and alerting as normal. This would save sending out known alerts as you rebooted or created other, known, alerting events.

3.1. Creating and Using Maintenance Windows

You can create a Maintenance Window for an individual device or for any grouping of devices in any hierarchy you create and define. You can create these windows either for a single device or create a window per device class or system, and have the window propagate to all devices that fall below where you create the window.

To create a new maintenance window:

  1. Navigate to the device or group of devices where you want to define the maintenance window. Open the page menu and select More and then Administration.

    The Administration page appears.

  2. From the Maintenance table menu, select Add Maint Window.

    The Add Maintenance Window appears.

  3. In the ID field enter a name for the maintenance window and click OK.

    The name appears in the Maintenance Window list.

  4. To define the window, click the name of the Maintenance Window.

    The Maintenance Window Status Tab appears.

  5. Define the attributes for this Maintenance window.

    • Name - Name of the maintenance window.

    • Enabled - True or False as to whether you want this maintenance window active.

    • Start - The time for the window to become active.

    • Duration - The length of time for the window to be in effect starting from the Start time.

    • Start Production State - Defines the production state for the window before it opens.

    • Stop Production State - Defines the production state for the object once the maintenance window closes.

  6. Click Save.