Performing Cluster Maintenance

Manages planned cluster maintenance across all deployment tiers. For Self-Hosted, this means draining and restarting individual nodes. For Advanced/BYOC, this means configuring and managing maintenance windows for CRL-applied patches. For Standard and Basic, maintenance is fully managed with no customer action required.

When to Use This Skill

• Planning OS patching, hardware changes, or configuration updates (Self-Hosted)
• Configuring or modifying a maintenance window (Advanced, BYOC)
• Setting patch deferral policies (Advanced, BYOC)
• Monitoring during a CRL-managed maintenance event (Advanced, BYOC)
• Running pre-maintenance validation checks (Self-Hosted, Advanced, BYOC)
• Understanding how maintenance affects your application (all tiers)
• Preparing applications for maintenance events (all tiers)

For permanent node removal: Use managing-cluster-capacity. For pre-maintenance health check: Use reviewing-cluster-health. For version upgrades: Use upgrading-cluster-version.

Step 1: Gather Context

Required Context

Additional Context (by tier)

If Self-Hosted:

If Advanced or BYOC:

If Standard or Basic: No context needed — maintenance is fully managed.

Context-Driven Routing

Self-Hosted Node Maintenance

Applies when: Tier = Self-Hosted

Self-Hosted operators manage all maintenance directly. The core operation is draining a node to safely move leases and connections before stopping it.

Pre-Maintenance Checks

Run all checks before any maintenance operation. Stop if any check fails.

Checks 1-3, 5 (node liveness, drain state, replication, version consistency):

cockroach node status --decommission --certs-dir=<certs-dir> --host=<any-live-node>

Stop conditions in the output:

• any is_live = false (Check 1)
• any is_draining = true (Check 2)
• any ranges_underreplicated > 0 (Check 3)
• multiple distinct values in the build column (Check 5)

Check 4: No disruptive jobs running (WAIT or pause before proceeding):

WITH j AS (SHOW JOBS)
SELECT job_id, job_type, status, now() - created AS running_for FROM j
WHERE status IN ('running', 'paused')
  AND job_type IN ('SCHEMA CHANGE', 'BACKUP', 'RESTORE', 'IMPORT', 'NEW SCHEMA CHANGE');

Check 6: Storage utilization safe (WARNING if any node > 70%):

No production-safe SQL view exposes per-store capacity. Use the DB Console Overview → Storage page or scrape the per-node Prometheus endpoint:

curl -ks https://<node>:8080/_status/vars | grep -E '^capacity( |_used|_available)'

Stop conditions: Do not proceed with maintenance if any node is not live, ranges are under-replicated, another node is draining, or a rolling upgrade is in progress. Wait for running jobs to complete or pause them.

See maintenance-prechecks reference for a consolidated precheck script.

Execute Drain

If platform = bare metal or VMs:

cockroach node drain --self --certs-dir=<certs-dir> --host=<node-address>

If long-running queries expected:

cockroach node drain --self --certs-dir=<certs-dir> --host=<node-address> --drain-wait=60s

If platform = Kubernetes:

# Operator handles drain automatically during pod eviction
kubectl delete pod <pod-name>
# Or for rolling restart:
kubectl rollout restart statefulset cockroachdb

Stop, Maintain, Restart

If process manager = systemd:

sudo systemctl stop cockroachdb
# ... perform maintenance ...
sudo systemctl start cockroachdb

If process manager = manual:

kill -TERM $(pgrep -f 'cockroach start')
# ... perform maintenance ...
cockroach start --certs-dir=<certs-dir> --store=<path> --join=<addresses> --background

Never use kill -9 unless the process is unresponsive to SIGTERM.

Post-Restart Verification

cockroach node status --certs-dir=<certs-dir> --host=<any-live-node>

The restarted node should show is_live = true. The replicas_leaseholders column for that node should increase over the next several minutes as leases rebalance back.

See drain-details reference for drain phases, timeout configuration, and advanced monitoring.

Storage Maintenance

Periodic storage maintenance for Self-Hosted clusters:

Ballast file verification:

ls -lh <store-path>/auxiliary/EMERGENCY_BALLAST
# If missing, create: cockroach debug ballast <store-path>/auxiliary/EMERGENCY_BALLAST --size=1GiB

Disk utilization check:

Use the DB Console Overview → Storage page or the per-node Prometheus endpoint:

curl -ks https://<node>:8080/_status/vars | grep -E '^capacity( |_used|_available)'

Nodes above 70% utilization should be addressed before maintenance — draining a node temporarily increases load on remaining nodes.

Advanced Maintenance Management

Applies when: Tier = Advanced

Advanced clusters are managed by Cockroach Labs. CRL applies patches and performs infrastructure maintenance during the configured maintenance window. You do not drain or restart nodes — CRL handles this using rolling restarts.

Configure a Maintenance Window

1. Cloud Console → Cluster → Settings → Maintenance
2. Set a weekly 6-hour window
   • Choose day of week (e.g., Sunday)
   • Choose start time in UTC (e.g., 02:00 UTC)
   • Window duration is 6 hours

If no window is configured, CRL applies patches at a time of their choosing.

View Current Maintenance Window

Cloud Console → Cluster → Settings → Maintenance shows the current schedule.

Cloud API:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $COCKROACH_API_KEY" \
  "https://cockroachlabs.cloud/api/v1/clusters/<cluster-id>" | jq '.maintenance_window'

Defer Patches

If a pending patch needs to be delayed (e.g., for testing):

1. Cloud Console → Cluster → Settings → Upgrades
2. Select deferral period: 30, 60, or 90 days

Deferred patches still apply at the end of the deferral period. Deferral only delays — it does not skip.

What Happens During Maintenance

1. CRL applies the patch using rolling restarts — one node at a time
2. Each node is drained (connections and leases moved), updated, and restarted
3. Cluster remains available throughout (multi-node clusters)
4. Performance may be slightly degraded during the window due to temporarily reduced capacity

Single-node clusters experience downtime during maintenance. Consider scaling to 3+ nodes for production workloads.

Monitor During Maintenance

Cloud Console:

• Cluster Overview shows node status during rolling restarts
• Metrics page shows temporary dips in QPS and capacity
• Alerts may fire for transient node unavailability

During maintenance:

# Check which nodes are currently live and what version they're on
cockroach node status --decommission --certs-dir=<certs-dir> --host=<any-live-node>

Best Practices

• Schedule during your lowest-traffic period
• Monitor P99 latency during and after the window
• Test patches in a staging cluster before production
• Use deferral to align with your testing and release cadence
• Configure alerting to notify during maintenance windows
• Ensure applications implement connection retry with exponential backoff

BYOC Maintenance Management

Applies when: Tier = BYOC

BYOC maintenance follows the same CRL-managed process as Advanced. Follow all Advanced Maintenance Management steps for maintenance window configuration, patch deferral, and monitoring.

Cloud Provider Visibility

Since BYOC clusters run in your cloud account, you can directly observe maintenance operations:

If AWS:

• EC2 console shows instance restarts during rolling patches
• CloudWatch metrics show brief dips during node cycling
• Set up CloudWatch Alarms for instance state changes

If GCP:

• Compute Engine console shows VM restarts
• Cloud Monitoring shows instance-level events
• Configure alerting policies for instance uptime

If Azure:

• Azure portal shows VM cycling
• Azure Monitor captures instance restart events
• Set up Azure Alerts for VM availability

BYOC Infrastructure Maintenance

For infrastructure changes in your cloud account that CRL does not manage (VPC, security groups, IAM, DNS):

• Coordinate with CRL before making changes that could affect the cluster
• Do not modify CRL-managed resources (instances, disks, network interfaces)
• Test infrastructure changes in a staging BYOC cluster first
• Changes to networking (PrivateLink, PSC, VPC Peering) may require CRL coordination

Standard Maintenance

Applies when: Tier = Standard

Standard is a multi-tenant managed service. There are no nodes, no maintenance windows to configure, and no patches to defer. Cockroach Labs manages all maintenance transparently.

What to Expect

• Patches are applied during low-traffic periods chosen by CRL
• No downtime during maintenance
• No customer notification required for routine patches
• Major version upgrades are also automatic

Application Preparation

• Implement connection retry logic with exponential backoff
• Handle brief latency variations gracefully
• Monitor Cloud Console for any service notifications

Basic Maintenance

Applies when: Tier = Basic

Basic is a serverless offering. All maintenance is fully managed by Cockroach Labs. The serverless architecture is designed for zero-downtime maintenance.

What to Expect

• All patches and upgrades are transparent
• No customer action required
• No maintenance notifications needed

Application Preparation

• Implement connection retry logic (recommended for all production applications)
• Be aware that idle clusters may scale to zero — first reconnection after inactivity may have higher latency (this is not maintenance-related)

Safety Considerations

Read-only monitoring queries are safe on all tiers.

Self-Hosted node maintenance:

• Only drain one node at a time
• Drain cannot be canceled once started
• Applications must have connection retry logic
• Load balancer detects drained node via /health?ready=1 returning error
• Never SIGKILL unless process is unresponsive to SIGTERM

Advanced/BYOC maintenance windows:

• Single-node clusters experience downtime during maintenance
• Deferring patches too long delays security fixes — evaluate CVE impact
• Do not modify CRL-managed infrastructure during a maintenance window

Standard/Basic: No maintenance risk for customers — fully managed by CRL.

See safety-guide reference for detailed risk matrix.

Troubleshooting

References

Skill references:

• Drain phases and timeouts
• Maintenance prechecks
• Safety guide

Related skills:

• reviewing-cluster-health
• managing-cluster-capacity
• upgrading-cluster-version

Official CockroachDB Documentation:

• Node Shutdown
• cockroach node drain
• Manage Advanced Cluster
• Cloud Upgrade Policy