Schedule maintenance downtime in ITSI

Schedule maintenance downtime in IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) to prevent alerts from triggering from machines and other devices that are undergoing maintenance operations or don't require active monitoring. Defining maintenance windows for scheduled down times, such as during server or software upgrades, reduces unnecessary noise. For more information about maintenance windows and their impact on ITSI objects, see Overview of maintenance windows in ITSI

For example, if your ticketing system experiences a failure and you start to receive a cascade of identical notable events, you can put the service monitoring the ticketing system into maintenance mode to stop ITSI from generating alerts until the issue is resolved.

You can only view maintenance windows that contain at least one ITSI object (for example, a service or external configuration item) you have read access to. If you have only read permissions for the services or entities in a maintenance window, you can view but not edit the maintenance window. You can also define service or entity rules using service tags, info fields, or advanced filters instead of selecting individual objects.

You can only bulk delete maintenance windows that contain services or entities for which you have write access. However, because external configuration items are global, any user with write access to Maintenance Windows can edit or delete maintenance windows based on configuration items.

Prerequisites

  • Only users assigned the write_maintenance_calendar capability can create a maintenance window for objects which they have write access to. By default, the itoa_admin and itoa_team_admin roles have this capability.

  • Only users with the delete_maintenance_calendar capability can perform bulk delete operations.

  • Ingest outage data into Splunk (technology add-on, HEC, or custom input). Ensure External CIs exist in ITSI for every CI ID value in your source data. You need itoa_admin or itoa_team_admin to create or edit integrations.

Steps

  1. From the navigation menu, select Configuration then Additional Configuration then Maintenance Windows.
  2. Select Create Maintenance Window.
  3. Provide a title for the maintenance window. For example, "DB entity maintenance window."

  4. Set the schedule: One time or Recurring.

    1. For recurring maintenance windows, select your desired recurrence pattern (for example, weekly on Tuesdays), and customize the start and end date and time.

  5. Set the start time, duration, and end time for the maintenance window. Updating one setting can update the others; you do not need to set all three independently. If your maintenance window spans more than one day, do not use the preset time intervals from the Duration drop-down. Instead, manually select a specific date and time.

  6. Select Next.

  7. Select a Target type: Services, Entities, or External CIs (when enabled). Select the services, entities, or External CIs to include. Apply advanced filters for services or entities narrow results to services with a specific service tag, or entities that match a specific field (for example, the Info field, or Entity title). You can only select services or entities for which you have write access.
  8. Select Create. The selected entities or services enter maintenance mode according to the defined schedule.
Note: If you don't have write access to the Global team, you can't put entities into maintenance mode.

Import maintenance windows

Note: The Import Maintenance Window option is available only for the External CI target type.

For one-time imports without a recurring schedule, select Create Maintenance Window then Import Maintenance Windows to upload a CSV or run a Splunk search.

  • Import using a Splunk search: Configure the search to query your outage data, and set a lookback period for the search.

  • Import using a CSV file: Map the source CSV fields to the ITSI maintenance window fields.

Map the required fields to import your maintenance data:

  • Title: Name of the maintenance window

  • Start time: Maps to source start datetime field. When the maintenance window begins. CSV accepts YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm format that ITSI converts.

  • CI ID: Comma-separated list of CI identifiers. During import, each ID is resolved against the itsi_ci_information KV Store collection and must match. Each matching CI is stored as an object with _key, ci_id, and object_type: "external_ci".

  • Import source: Text field, the default value is Generic.

  • Source ID: unique identifier of the record in the external source system.

Configure additional field values: the end time, duration, timezone, and recurrence fields.

To import maintenance windows from an external data source, go to the Data Integrations page and select one of the generic outage integrations available. Alternatively, go to Configuration then Additional Configuration then Maintenance Windows. For more information, see Import external maintenance windows .

Maintenance windows imported using outage integrations, or a CSV/search bulk import may be read-only or partially restricted. Maintenance windows created manually can be fully edited, while imported or integration-managed maintenance windows should not be manually edited. Changes should be made in the data source or integration.

Clone a maintenance window

Duplicate an existing maintenance window to quickly create a new one with a similar configuration, reducing manual setup.

  1. From the navigation menu, select Configuration > Additional Configuration > Maintenance Windows.

  2. Identify the maintenance window in the list that you want to clone.

  3. In the settings column for the maintenance window, click the Actions menu.

  4. Click Clone.

  5. Review the details and continue creating your maintenance window.

Check maintenance window status

  1. Select Configuration then Additional Configuration then Maintenance Windows and review the Status column (Scheduled, Active, Paused, or Completed).

  2. On a specific service, entity, or External CI's details page, select the Maintenance Windows tab.

  3. Look for the maintenance banner on object pages when the object is currently in maintenance.