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Fleet Maintenance Windows & Update Policies

Edge systems, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), interactive kiosks, and critical machines cannot be updated at arbitrary times. Applying an operating system swap or restarting a container workload during peak operation risks business disruption, mission aborts, or safety hazards.

Admiral provides native Fleet Maintenance Windows that control when automated rollouts and updates are permitted to execute.

1. Defining a Fleet Update Window​

Maintenance windows are configured per fleet via the dashboard under Fleet > Deploy > OS versions or programmatically through the REST API:

PUT /v1/fleets/{fleetId}/update-window
Content-Type: application/json
X-Organization-ID: {orgId}

{
  "enabled": true,
  "timezone": "Australia/Sydney",
  "start_time": "02:00",
  "end_time": "05:00",
  "days_of_week": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday"]
}
  • Timezone-Aware Scheduling: Evaluates schedules in the local operational timezone of the deployment (e.g. Australia/Sydney, America/New_York, or Europe/London).
  • Day & Hour Bounding: Constrains disruptive actions to low-traffic hours (e.g., 2:00 AM – 5:00 AM) or when autonomous robots are parked at base charging stations.

2. Before a Rollout​

Check whether a fleet is inside its window right now with the window status check below. The rollout wizard's pre-flight impact check counts affected and online devices but does not take windows into account.

3. Maintenance Window Enforcement​

When a rollout begins:

  • Devices In-Window: Proceed as soon as the rollout's canary and in-flight limit admit them. The active A/B slot or container workload updates, boots, and completes health verification.
  • Devices Out-of-Window: Placed in a QUEUED_MAINTENANCE state. The Admiral init supervisor holds the update until the device's clock enters the configured window. The device and rollout pages show it as Waiting for update window / Staged.

Checking Window Status​

You can check whether updates are permitted on a fleet at any given moment:

GET /v1/fleets/{fleetId}/update-window/check
X-Organization-ID: {orgId}

Returns allowed: true if the fleet is currently within its maintenance window, or allowed: false with next_window_at: "2026-09-15T02:00:00Z".

4. Emergency & CVE Bypass (Out-of-Band Updates)​

When addressing zero-day security vulnerabilities (CVEs) or emergency operational bugs, administrators and CI/CD service accounts can issue a forced rollout:

POST /v1/rollouts
Content-Type: application/json
X-Organization-ID: {orgId}

{
  "fleet_id": "976acb62-3f36-4ba3-81f6-a8b7fbd350b8",
  "config_id": "cf-production-core",
  "force": true
}

Setting force: true instructs the Admiral manager to immediately bypass the maintenance window, deploy the update, and execute health checks without waiting for scheduled hours.