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A maintenance window tells renters that you are going to take a machine down. When you schedule one, everybody with a running or stopped instance on that machine is notified with the start time and duration, and a warning appears on their instance card so they can save their work. Scheduling a window is a notification, not an action. It does not stop instances, unlist the machine, or block new rentals. You still take the machine down yourself when the window arrives.
The screenshots on this page use the redesigned Machines page, which is currently in Early Access. See Using the classic Machines page if you have not opted in — the steps are nearly the same, but you cannot set a reason.

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Set a window on one machine

1

Open the Machines page

Go to Host → Machines and find the machine you want to take down.
2

Open its settings

Click Settings on the machine’s card.
Machines page with the Settings button on a machine card circled

The Settings button on a machine card

3

Go to the Machine Maintenances tab

The settings dialog opens on Listing Settings. Switch to Machine Maintenances.
Machine settings dialog open on Listing Settings with the Machine Maintenances tab circled

The Machine Maintenances tab in the machine settings dialog

4

Set the start, duration, and reason

Fill in all three fields:
  • Maintenance start — the date and time the machine goes down. It defaults to 24 hours from now.
  • Duration (hours) — how long the machine will be unavailable, as a whole number of hours.
  • Reason — what the maintenance is for. See Reasons for the full list.
Maintenance start, duration, and reason filled in, with the Add button circled

A window filled in and ready to add

5

Click Add

Add stays disabled until the duration is a positive whole number and a reason is selected. Once you click it, the window is created and renters are notified.The new window appears in the table below the form, marked Upcoming.
Maintenance table listing a 48 hour window marked Upcoming, with its start, duration, and reason

The scheduled window in the maintenance table

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Set one window across several machines

If several machines go down together — a rack, a circuit, everything behind one switch — you can schedule a single window for all of them in one pass.
1

Select the machines

Tick the checkbox on each machine you want to include, or use Select all to take every machine in the current view. A bar appears showing how many are selected, with a Bulk Edit button on the right.
Machines page with a machine checked and the Bulk Edit button in the selection bar

Selecting machines reveals the Bulk Edit button

2

Click Bulk Edit

The same settings dialog opens, titled with the number of machines selected instead of a single machine ID.
3

Schedule the window

Go to Machine Maintenances and fill in the start, duration, and reason exactly as above, then click Add. Every selected machine gets the same window, and renters on all of them are notified.The list below the form gains a Machine column so you can tell the windows apart, and a summary tells you which machines succeeded and which failed.
A bulk request covers at most 100 machines. Select fewer and repeat if you have more than that.

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Review or cancel a window

The Machine Maintenances tab lists every window on the machine, past and upcoming, with a status: To cancel a window, click the ✕ at the end of its row. Upcoming and ongoing windows can be cancelled; completed ones cannot.
A window that Vast scheduled on your machine cannot be cancelled from this page. Contact support if one needs to be removed.

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Field reference

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Start time

The start must be in the future, and no more than a year out.

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Duration

Duration is recorded in whole hours, with a minimum of one. A fractional value is rounded down, so anything under an hour becomes one hour.

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Reasons

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Using the classic Machines page

The redesigned Machines page is opt-in while it is in Early Access. To turn it on, open Account Settings, find the Early Access section, and enable Machines page.
Early Access section of Account Settings with the Machines page toggle

The Early Access toggle in Account Settings

You get there the same way: Settings on a single machine, or Bulk Edit once you have selected several. The dialog is what differs. It has no tabs — the window is set from a Set Machine Maintenance section partway down it — and it has no Reason field, so every window scheduled there is recorded as Other. Set the start date and Duration (hours), then click Schedule Maintenance. Existing windows appear under Scheduled Maintenances, with a Category column that shows the stored value rather than the label used on the redesigned page — a window set to Updates reads as software here.
Set Machine Maintenance section of the classic machine settings dialog

Setting a window on the classic Machines page