Preferred Salesforce Maintenance Schedule

Note: Salesforce uses commercially reasonable efforts to schedule all planned downtime during the hours outlined in each section.*

Commerce Cloud: Planned downtime is scheduled during weekday hours from 2:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. in the time zone in which the applicable Realm is hosted.  

Heroku: No window defined. SFDC gives at least 24 hours’ notice for planned downtime with updates posted to http://status.heroku.com.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: Planned downtime is scheduled during the hours from 8:00 p.m. to 5 a.m. the following day, Eastern Time. SFDC gives at least 24 hours’ notice for planned downtime in accordance with the Agreement, via email, and/or via a conspicuous on-screen message in the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement web interface.

Marketing Cloud Intelligence: Planned downtime is scheduled during the hours from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, U.S. Eastern Time. SFDC gives at least 24 hours’ notice for planned downtime in accordance with the Agreement, via email, and/or via a conspicuous on-screen message in the Marketing Cloud Intelligence Services.
 

Marketing Cloud Engagement Preferred Maintenance Windows

System Maintenance

System Maintenance is for sustaining the security, availability, and performance of the infrastructure supporting Marketing Cloud Services.

If planned maintenance requires customer action in advance (e.g. 1P firewall replacement, Data Center Core Switch replacements, Network Load Balancer (F5) replacements in our Stacks etc.), Marketing Cloud communicates via email from Product and Service notifications 30 days in advance and Trust Notifications 10 days in advance. Please note, if emergency system maintenance is required, customers may be notified less than one week in advance.

Plan your maintenance activities (software upgrades, integration changes, etc.) outside of the preferred Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement system maintenance windows for your instance(s). There may be times that system maintenance is scheduled outside of these windows in order to maintain system availability, performance, and security of the Marketing Cloud infrastructure.

Marketing Cloud Engagement schedules system maintenance during the windows listed in the table below.

Release Maintenance

Release Maintenance is for upgrading Marketing Cloud Engagement services to the latest product version, delivering enhanced features and functionality. There are three different kinds of release maintenance: major releases, patch releases, and emergency releases. 

Receive release communications for up-to-date information on Marketing Cloud Engagement release maintenance. Upcoming major release maintenance dates and times are posted in the Marketing Cloud Release Notes.

Major release maintenance occurs three times per year during the windows listed below. The instance(s) are generally available during the release window.

Patch releases and emergency releases are used to deliver scheduled and ad hoc application fixes. These fixes are typically seamless to customers. 

Patches and emergency releases are deployed without downtime. Patch releases are deployed to instances over a two-week period, starting on Thursday of the first week and concluding on Thursday of the following week to ensure a safe deployment of changes. Emergency releases are conducted on an as-needed basis and can occur on any day of the week. The instance(s) is generally available during the release window.

Preferred Salesforce Maintenance Schedule

System Maintenance

System Maintenance is for sustaining the security, availability, and performance of the infrastructure supporting Salesforce services.

When maintenance is scheduled, Salesforce publishes the dates and times of the maintenance windows on our Trust Status site maintenance calendar. For maintenance that impacts an entire instance, Trust Notifications are sent to Trust Notification subscribers via email when the maintenance schedule is posted to Trust and ten days before the maintenance. Trust Notifications are sent at the start and end of each maintenance. Approximately one week before the scheduled maintenance, we communicate the dates and times via the in-application pop-up window upon login to Salesforce. In the event we need to reschedule maintenance, the maintenance record is updated on Trust and an email is sent to Trust Notification subscribers.

If planned maintenance requires customer action in advance (e.g. updating network settings and hard-coded references in preparation for instance refreshes), Salesforce endeavors to communicate via email* months before the maintenance. Please note, if emergency system maintenance is required, customers may be notified less than one week in advance.

Whenever possible, and only as maintenance is necessary, Salesforce schedules system maintenance the first and third weekends of the calendar month during the windows listed in the tables below (a Hyperforce system maintenance table has been added to this article). We ask that you plan your maintenance activities for your Salesforce org (software upgrades, integration changes, etc.) outside of the preferred Salesforce system maintenance windows for your instance(s), either in our First Party data centers or the Hyperforce data centers. There may be times that system maintenance is scheduled outside of these windows in order to maintain system availability, performance, and security of the Salesforce infrastructure.

NOTE: When a calendar month begins on a Sunday, we would hold system maintenance the first and third full weekends of the month. For example, system maintenance in September 2019 may occur September 7, 8, 21, and/or 22 as September 1, 2019 falls on a Sunday.

**These instances, normally scheduled for maintenance Sunday between 12:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Pacific Time, may occasionally have maintenance Saturday between 7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Pacific Time for infrastructure that is shared with other instances within the region.

***These instances, normally scheduled for maintenance Saturday between 7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Pacific Time, may occasionally have maintenance Saturday between 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time for infrastructure that is shared with other instances within the region.

****These instances, normally scheduled Saturday between 16:00 and 20:00 UTC, may occasionally have maintenance Saturday between 15:00 and 19:00 UTC for infrastructure that is shared with other instances within the region.

Customers have read-only access to their data during many system maintenance windows to minimize the impact of system maintenance. For more information, review How is my org impacted during Salesforce maintenance? article.

*Salesforce Product & Service Notifications are sent via email to Salesforce admins (identified as users with the “Manage Users”, “Modify all Data” permissions) for your organization. For more information, see the Product & Service Notifications article.

Release Maintenance 

Release Maintenance is for upgrading Salesforce services to the latest product version delivering enhanced features and functionality. There are three different kinds of release maintenance: major releases, patch releases, and daily releases.
To see the major release schedule for your instance, visit: status.salesforce.com and select the relevant instance, and then click the 'Maintenances' tab.
An email notification containing Sandbox preview instructions is sent approximately one month before upgrading Sandbox instances. Trust Notification emails of major release dates are sent to Trust Notification subscribers two months before upgrading production instances. The Release Notes document, describing the new features and functionality, is posted in Help & Training approximately one month before upgrading production instances. Final release reminders are communicated to all customers approximately one week in advance via application pop-up windows upon logging into Salesforce.
Major release maintenance occurs three times per year during the windows listed below.

Hyperforce
We communicate the date of major releases on Hyperforce instances* approximately one year in advance on status.salesforce.com , and releases occur during a 30 minute window that is communicated 60 days in advance. Major release upgrades on Hyperforce require no service downtime. Users who are online during the upgrade are prompted to log in again to comply with security requirements.
On the day of the major release, customers are notified via posts on status.salesforce.com as well as Trust Notification emails (for Trust Notification subscribers):

1. When the maintenance starts
2. When the maintenance ends
3. When the release is live

Salesforce endeavors to complete the feature enablement within 24 hours of the major release window.

*Hyperforce instances begin with three letters followed by numbers.

First Party
We communicate the date and time of major releases on First Party instances* approximately one year in advance on status.salesforce.com. The instance is unavailable for up to five minutes during the release window.

On the day of the major release, customers are notified via posts on status.salesforce.com as well as Trust Notification emails (for Trust Notification subscribers):

1. Ten (10) minutes before the scheduled release window begins
   
2. When the maintenance starts
3. When the maintenance ends
4. When the release is live

Salesforce endeavors to complete the feature enablement within 24 hours of the major release window.

*First party instances begin with two letters followed by numbers.

Patch Releases and Daily Releases are used to deliver scheduled and ad hoc application fixes and are typically seamless to customers. Whenever possible, patches and daily releases are deployed during off-peak hours and without downtime. Patch releases are scheduled weekly and are usually deployed to instances on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, with releases to Asia-Pacific instances the following day. Daily releases are conducted on an as-needed basis and can occur any day of the week.

*Salesforce Product & Service Notifications are sent via email to Salesforce admins (identified as users with the “Manage Users”, “Modify all Data” permissions) for your organization. For more information, see the Product & Service Notifications article.