Lobster maintains a structured, predictable maintenance schedule for all cloud environments. This ensures that your systems remain secure, up to date, and performant. All times are specified in UTC.
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This maintenance schedule applies to all cloud customers and covers both Lobster Data Platform (LDP) customers and customers using Lobster_data and Lobster_pro.
Standard Maintenance Windows
Maintenance Type | Affected Systems | Schedule | Details | Impact on Availability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
All environments (Test, DEV, and Production) | 1st Sunday of each month, 06:00 to 08:00 UTC | Managed by Lobster under the Shared Responsibility Model. Customer-specific adjustments to this process are not possible. | On non-HA systems: Within this time window, one or more server restarts may occur. The estimated downtime is approximately 5 minutes per required restart. Information on maintenance of HA systems is available here: System Availability for High Availability Systems | |
Lobster software updates | Test and DEV systems only | 1st Sunday of each month, 08:00 to 09:00 UTC | The current software version is first deployed to test and DEV systems. | On non-HA systems: Within this time window, one or more server restarts may occur. The estimated downtime is approximately 5 minutes per required restart. Information on maintenance of HA systems is available here: System Availability for High Availability Systems |
Lobster software updates | Production systems only | 4th Sunday of each month, 06:00 to 07:00 UTC | The same software version that was deployed to the DEV/Test systems is installed on production. | On non-HA systems: Within this time window, one or more server restarts may occur. The estimated downtime is approximately 5 minutes per required restart. Information on maintenance of HA systems is available here: System Availability for High Availability Systems |
Database maintenance | All systems | 1st Sunday of each month, 06:00 to 07:00 UTC | Managed by Lobster under the Shared Responsibility Model. Updates by Lobster are rolled out exclusively within this time window. The cloud provider reserves the right to apply critical updates. These may be carried out on any Sunday, without prior notice, within the scheduled time window. Customer-specific adjustments to this process are not possible. | Within this time window, one or more restarts of the database server may occur. The estimated downtime is approximately 5 minutes per required restart. Information on maintenance of HA systems is available here: System Availability for High Availability Systems |
Re-org job | All systems | Daily, starting at 01:00 UTC | Internal reorganization job. Duration depends on system size (15 to 360 minutes). | No downtime. The job runs in the background. |
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You can find the full update process here: Cloud Update Policy
Operating System Maintenance Windows
Important
The maintenance windows for operating system and database updates are fixed and cannot be adjusted on a per-customer basis. Unified schedules allow Lobster to maintain all customer environments consistently and efficiently.
System Availability for High Availability Systems
High Availability systems are designed for continuous operation and generally protect against unplanned service interruptions. Software updates on HA systems follow a coordinated maintenance procedure across all nodes, which is planned in advance and announced in good time.
Continuous availability during maintenance cannot be guaranteed in all cases due to the underlying architecture and depends on the scope of the specific maintenance work being carried out.
For HA systems, the database runs as an Aurora cluster. During database maintenance, an automatic failover to a reader node takes place, which typically results in a brief interruption ranging from a few seconds up to approximately one minute.
Notification Policy
You will be notified approximately 7 days before each scheduled maintenance. Notifications are delivered through two channels: the Lobster status pages and directly inside your Lobster software.
Important - How to receive maintenance notifications
All details about the status pages, the subscription process, and notifications inside the Lobster software are documented centrally on the System Status Pages page.
We strongly recommend that all Lobster Cloud customers subscribe to the General Lobster Cloud Status page. Each month, it publishes the upcoming maintenance windows and the specific work planned for each window. You need this information to plan your own operations and those of your users in good time.
Planned time of notification
Notification | scheduled time |
|---|---|
Maintenance notification for test systems | 4th Sunday of the previous month (7+ days before the 1st Sunday) |
Maintenance notification for production systems | 3rd Sunday of the current month (7+ days before the 4th Sunday) |
No Separate Email Notifications
Lobster does not send separate email notifications for maintenance windows. All communication takes place exclusively via the Lobster status pages and the notifications inside the Lobster software.
Important: Customer responsibility
As a customer, you are responsible for subscribing to the General Lobster Cloud Status page yourself. This is the only way to ensure that your teams are informed about upcoming maintenance in good time.
The subscription model for the status page provides a key advantage: you decide which users or functional mailboxes receive the notifications, and you can adjust, extend, or reduce the distribution at any time on your own. No request to or change by Lobster is required.
Recommendation
Regularly check the notifications inside your Lobster software, both on your test and DEV systems and on your production systems. This ensures that no maintenance notifications go unnoticed.
Why All Operating System Updates Take Place on the 1st Sunday of Each Month
Lobster deliberately performs operating system updates at the same time across all cloud systems. The reasons at a glance:
AWS-native operating system: The Lobster Cloud runs on an AWS-native Linux, currently Amazon Linux 2023. AWS provides the corresponding updates and patches, pre-tested and released.
Curated patch level: AWS publishes updates continuously, sometimes up until shortly before the maintenance window. An internal Lobster policy determines which patches are actually rolled out. Only verified and approved packages are applied.
Consistent state across all systems: The fixed maintenance window ensures that all Lobster Cloud systems run on the same patch level. This is a key foundation for compliance requirements and simplifies troubleshooting and quality assurance.
Additional infrastructure work in the same window: Alongside the OS updates, we perform further maintenance work on the cloud infrastructure, also aimed at maintaining a consistent state. This reduces the overall number of maintenance interruptions.
Minimal impact on the Lobster software: The operating system generally has little to no impact on the operation of the Lobster software. Business processes are not affected by OS updates.
Validation through test environments: Operating system updates are validated in advance in internal test environments to ensure clean and reliable operation, as far as this is realistically possible in IT practice.