Maintaining an Amazon Neptune DB Cluster
Periodically, Neptune performs maintenance on Neptune resources. Maintenance most often involves updates to the DB cluster's underlying operating system or database engine version. Updates to the operating system most often occur for security issues and should be done as soon as possible. You can determine which engine release version you currently have installed by using the instance-status API.
Maintenance items require that Neptune take your DB cluster offline for a short time. Maintenance that requires a resource to be offline include scale compute operations (which generally take only a few minutes from start to finish), and required operating system or database patching. Required patching is automatically scheduled only for patches that are related to security and instance reliability. Such patching occurs infrequently (typically once every few months) and seldom requires more than a fraction of your maintenance window.
DB instances are not automatically backed up when an OS update is applied. So you should back up your DB instances before you apply an update.
You can view whether a maintenance update is available for your DB cluster using the Neptune console. If an update is available, it is indicated by the word Available or Required in the Maintenance column for the DB cluster on the Neptune console.
If an update is available, you can do any of the following:
Defer the maintenance items.
Apply the maintenance items immediately.
Schedule the maintenance items to start during your next maintenance window.
Take no action.
Certain operating system updates are marked as Required. If you defer a required update, you receive a notice from Neptune indicating when the update will be performed. Other updates are marked as Available, and these you can defer indefinitely.
The maintenance window determines when pending operations start, but it does not limit the total execution time of these operations. Maintenance operations are not guaranteed to finish before the maintenance window ends, and can continue beyond the specified end time. For more information, see Neptune Maintenance Window.
Neptune Maintenance Window
Every DB cluster has a weekly maintenance window during which any system changes are applied. You can think of the maintenance window as an opportunity to control when modifications and software patching occur, in the event either are requested or required. If a maintenance event is scheduled for a given week, it is initiated during the 30-minute maintenance window that you identify. Most maintenance events also complete during the 30-minute maintenance window, although larger maintenance events might sometimes take more than 30 minutes to complete.
The 30-minute maintenance window is selected at random from an 8-hour block of time per Region. If you don't specify a preferred maintenance window when you create the DB cluster, Neptune assigns a 30-minute maintenance window on a randomly selected day of the week.
Neptune consumes some of the resources on your DB cluster while maintenance is being applied. You might observe a minimal effect on performance. For a DB instance, on rare occasions, a Multi-AZ failover might be required for a maintenance update to complete.
Here are the time blocks for each AWS Region from which default maintenance windows are assigned:
| Region | Time Block |
|---|---|
| US West (Oregon) Region | 06:00–14:00 UTC |
| US West (N. California) Region | 06:00–14:00 UTC |
| US East (Ohio) Region | 03:00–11:00 UTC |
| Europe (Ireland) Region | 22:00–06:00 UTC |
Adjusting the Preferred DB Cluster Maintenance Window Using the Console
The Neptune DB cluster maintenance window should fall at the time of lowest usage. Thus you might need to change it from time to time. Your DB cluster is unavailable during this time only if the updates that are being applied require an outage. The outage is for the minimum amount of time required to make the necessary updates.
To adjust the preferred DB cluster maintenance window
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Sign in to the AWS Management Console, and open the Amazon Neptune console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/neptune/home
. In the navigation pane, choose Clusters.
Choose the DB cluster for which you want to change the maintenance window.
Choose Actions, Modify cluster.
In the Maintenance section, update the maintenance window.
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Choose Continue.
On the confirmation page, review your changes.
To apply the changes to the maintenance window immediately, select Apply immediately.
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Choose Modify cluster to save your changes.
To edit your changes, choose Back, or to cancel your changes, choose Cancel.
