Q: What is a maintenance window?

A maintenance window is a weekly two-hour-long time slot during which AWS Elastic Beanstalk will initiate platform updates if managed platform updates is enabled and a new version of the platform is available. For example, if you select a maintenance window that begins every Sunday at 2 AM, AWS Elastic Beanstalk will initiate the platform update sometime between 2-4 AM every Sunday. It is important to note that, depending on the configuration of your applications, updates could complete outside of the maintenance window.

The maintenance window is set on a per-environment basis, providing you the option to set different maintenance windows for your various application components or applications. This allows environment updates to be staggered if you do not want multiple pieces of your application to be updated at the same time. If you enable managed platform updates but do not specify a maintenance window, a default weekly 2-hour window will be assigned for your environment. If you want to change when maintenance is performed on your behalf, you can do so by modifying the managed update configuration in the AWS Management Console or by using the UpdateEnvironment API.