How long is the Amazon RDS maintenance window?

Resolution

Amazon RDS maintenance is sometimes required to update a database engine version or the operating system (OS) of a DB instance or DB cluster. The duration of the maintenance varies based on the operations that Amazon RDS schedules for your DB instances. It also varies based on the operations that start during the maintenance window.

When you create or modify a DB instance, you can configure the maintenance window. Schedule maintenance to occur once a week, during a specific time period that lasts between 30 minutes and up to 23 hours and 30 minutes. After you configure the window, Amazon RDS starts maintenance actions during the scheduled time period.

To minimize downtime during required Amazon RDS maintenance, modify your DB instance to a Multi-AZ deployment before the scheduled update.

Maintenance Window end time

Updates can take longer to complete than the maintenance window time frame. For example, Amazon RDS can take longer to update if there's a large list of files that must be updated. Or, if a DB instance needs to restart.

After Amazon RDS updates the instance, the duration of the downtime can vary. The downtime varies based on whether the maintenance is an OS update or a database engine version update.

Note: You can't proactively start the Amazon managed maintenance period outside the maintenance window, but you can adjust your weekly maintenance period, accordingly. If you want scheduled maintenance to occur sooner, then adjust the preferred DB instance maintenance window.

Related information

What happens to Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift queries that are running during a maintenance window?

How do I configure notifications for Amazon RDS or Amazon Redshift maintenance windows?