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This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-01-18. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Enabling and scheduling maintenance mode

In this article

Some standard maintenance procedures, such as upgrading your GitHub Enterprise Server instance or restoring backups, require the instance to be taken offline for normal use.

About maintenance mode

Some types of operations require that you take your GitHub Enterprise Server instance offline and put it into maintenance mode:

  • Upgrading to a new version of GitHub Enterprise Server
  • Increasing CPU, memory, or storage resources allocated to the virtual machine
  • Migrating data from one virtual machine to another
  • Restoring data from a GitHub Enterprise Server Backup Utilities snapshot
  • Troubleshooting certain types of critical application issues

We recommend that you schedule a maintenance window for at least 30 minutes in the future to give users time to prepare. When a maintenance window is scheduled, all users will see a banner when accessing the site.

End user banner about scheduled maintenance

When the instance is in maintenance mode, all normal HTTP and Git access is refused. Git fetch, clone, and push operations are also rejected with an error message indicating that the site is temporarily unavailable. In high availability configurations, Git replication will be paused. GitHub Actions jobs will not be executed. Visiting the site in a browser results in a maintenance page.

The maintenance mode splash screen

Enabling maintenance mode immediately or scheduling a maintenance window for a later time

  1. From an administrative account on GitHub Enterprise Server, in the upper-right corner of any page, click .

    Screenshot of the rocket ship icon for accessing site admin settings

  2. If you're not already on the "Site admin" page, in the upper-left corner, click Site admin.

    Screenshot of "Site admin" link

  3. In the left sidebar, click Management Console. Management Console tab in the left sidebar

  4. At the top of the Management Console, click Maintenance. Maintenance tab

  5. Under "Enable and schedule", decide whether to enable maintenance mode immediately or to schedule a maintenance window for a future time.

    • To enable maintenance mode immediately, use the drop-down menu and click now. Drop-down menu with the option to enable maintenance mode now selected
    • To schedule a maintenance window for a future time, use the drop-down menu and click a start time. Drop-down menu with the option to schedule a maintenance window in two hours selected

  6. Select Enable maintenance mode. Checkbox for enabling or scheduling maintenance mode

  7. Under the left sidebar, click Save settings.

    Screenshot of the save settings button in the Management Console

    Note: Saving settings in the Management Console restarts system services, which could result in user-visible downtime.

  8. Wait for the configuration run to complete.

    Configuring your instance

Scheduling maintenance mode with the GitHub Enterprise Server APIs

You can schedule maintenance for different times or dates with the GitHub Enterprise Server APIs. For more information, see "Management Console."

Enabling or disabling maintenance mode for all nodes in a cluster

With the ghe-cluster-maintenance utility, you can set or unset maintenance mode for every node in a cluster.

$ ghe-cluster-maintenance -h
# Shows options
$ ghe-cluster-maintenance -q
# Queries the current mode
$ ghe-cluster-maintenance -s
# Sets maintenance mode
$ ghe-cluster-maintenance -u
# Unsets maintenance mode