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.

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Step 1: Gather Context

Required Context

Question	Options	Why It Matters
Deployment tier?	Self-Hosted, Advanced, BYOC, Standard, Basic	Determines maintenance procedure
Goal?	Plan maintenance, Configure maintenance window, Defer a patch, Monitor during maintenance, Prepare application	Routes to the right procedure

Additional Context (by tier)

If Self-Hosted:

Question	Options	Why It Matters
Maintenance type?	OS patching, Hardware change, Binary upgrade, Config change, Planned restart	Affects sequencing and post-maintenance steps
Deployment platform?	Bare metal, VMs, Kubernetes (Operator/Helm/manual)	Changes drain and restart commands
Process manager?	systemd, manual, container orchestrator	Changes stop/start commands
Target node ID?	Node ID	Required for drain command
Long-running queries expected?	Yes (increase drain timeout), No (default timeout)	Determines drain-wait parameter

If Advanced or BYOC:

Question	Options	Why It Matters
Maintenance window configured?	Yes (what schedule), No	Determines if window needs setup
Patch pending?	Yes, No, Don't know	Determines urgency
Cloud provider? (BYOC only)	AWS, GCP, Azure	For infrastructure-level monitoring

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

Context-Driven Routing

Tier	Go To
Self-Hosted	Self-Hosted Node Maintenance
Advanced	Advanced Maintenance Management
BYOC	BYOC Maintenance Management
Standard	Standard Maintenance
Basic	Basic Maintenance

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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.

-- Check 1: All nodes live (STOP if any node is not live)
SELECT n.node_id, n.is_live
FROM crdb_internal.gossip_nodes n
JOIN crdb_internal.gossip_liveness l USING (node_id) ORDER BY n.node_id;

-- Check 2: No other nodes currently draining (STOP if any draining)
SELECT node_id FROM crdb_internal.gossip_liveness WHERE draining = true;

-- Check 3: Ranges fully replicated (STOP if under-replicated ranges exist)
SELECT CASE WHEN array_length(replicas, 1) >= 3 THEN 'fully_replicated'
            ELSE 'under_replicated' END AS status, COUNT(*)
FROM crdb_internal.ranges_no_leases GROUP BY 1;

-- 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 5: Not mid-upgrade (STOP if versions differ)
SELECT DISTINCT build_tag FROM crdb_internal.gossip_nodes;

-- Check 6: Storage utilization safe (WARNING if any node > 70%)
SELECT node_id,
  ROUND((1 - available::FLOAT / capacity::FLOAT) * 100, 2) AS utilization_pct
FROM crdb_internal.kv_store_status ORDER BY node_id;

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

SELECT node_id, is_live FROM crdb_internal.gossip_nodes WHERE node_id = <node_id>;
-- is_live = true

SELECT node_id, lease_count FROM crdb_internal.kv_store_status WHERE node_id = <node_id>;
-- lease_count should increase over minutes as leases rebalance

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:

SELECT node_id,
  ROUND(capacity / 1073741824.0, 2) AS total_gb,
  ROUND(available / 1073741824.0, 2) AS available_gb,
  ROUND((1 - available::FLOAT / capacity::FLOAT) * 100, 2) AS utilization_pct
FROM crdb_internal.kv_store_status ORDER BY node_id;

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

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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

SQL (during maintenance):

-- Check which nodes are currently live
SELECT node_id, build_tag, is_live
FROM crdb_internal.gossip_nodes n
JOIN crdb_internal.gossip_liveness l USING (node_id) ORDER BY node_id;

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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

Issue	Tier	Fix
Drain very slow	SH	Check SHOW CLUSTER STATEMENTS for stuck queries
Drain hangs	SH	Check logs; SIGTERM if unresponsive
Node won't rejoin after restart	SH	Verify --join flag; check network connectivity
Leases not returning to node	SH	Wait 5-10 min; monitor lease_count
Clients not reconnecting	SH	Verify load balancer health check is passing
Maintenance window missed	ADV/BYOC	Contact support
Unexpected maintenance outside window	ADV/BYOC	Emergency patches may be applied outside windows; check Cloud Console notifications
Latency during maintenance	ADV/BYOC	Expected — temporarily reduced capacity; monitor and verify recovery after window

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