Mass edit maintenance windows

Last Modified

Wed Mar 07 19:20 GMT 2018

Description

  • I need to change the maintenance window for all of the agents at a site. The documentation suggests I can only do this on a per machine basis. Please provide information on how to change the maintenance window for all or a group of machines without having to edit them individually. Thanks.

Environment

  • N-able N-central 10.X and above

Solution

Editing a maintenance schedule will depend on how you applied the maintenance window. If the Maintenance Window was applied on the device level you will be able to follow these steps to edit the schedules.

Before you begin to change the maintenance window you want to verify it these are device level maintenance windows or applied maintenance windows. Maybe there is a mixture of both applied and device level maintenance windows. To verify this do the following.
  1. Open a device in the Device Details
  2. Select Settings > Maintenance Windows
  3. In the column mark Associated Rules recorded the name that is present.
If there is no associated rule then the maintenance windows were applied at the device level. Follow these steps to clear and set new a maintenance window.
  1. From the All Device View place a check mark into the devices you would like to edit
  2. From the options select Add Task > Maintenance > Clear Device Level Maintenance
  3. Select the same set of devices again from the All Device view
  4. From the options select Add Task > Maintenance or Patch Management Maintenance Window
Since device level maintenance windows can be different at each device, you cannot change individual maintenance windows on a group of device. You can only clear and recreate. Best practice for maintenance windows is to use an N-able N-central Rule to apply the maintenance windows and have a configuration item to change in future needs.

If you decide that you want to use a rule to apply your maintenance windows then you will still need to clear device level maintenance and add a rule to apply your schedules. It is good practice to apply maintenance windows to devices for the processes that requires maintenance windows. For example, if you want to enable Patch Management using a rule you would want to apply your Patch Management maintenance windows with rules that applies Patch Management. While you can create rules to just apply a maintenance window, it is recommended to keep the schedule with the items that the schedule reflects.
From the verification above, if you noted a rule that was applying the maintenance window these are the steps to modify the schedules in that rule.
  1. Login as an administrator of N-able N-central,
  2. SO Level > Configurations > Monitoring > Rules
  3. Locate the rule that was noted above and open to edit the configurations
  4. Select the Maintenance Windows Tab
  5. Locate the individual schedule you would like to modify
  6. Click on the schedule name and change/edit the schedule
  7. Save the rule and all devices associated to this rule will have the new configurations applied.