Maintenance

This document explains how maintenance and updates are performed on Darcy Cloud.

During a maintenance window, you can learn about service availability at status.darcy.ai . You can find out about upcoming maintenance events in the changelog . And at any time, you can reach out to Darcy Support .

Affected Systems

A maintenance event can affect one or both of Darcy Cloud or the attached edge nodes.

  • Darcy Cloud maintenance: Darcy Cloud Portal and API .
  • Edge Node maintenance: updates to the agent software and/or configuration installed on your edge devices.

Darcy Cloud

Typical Darcy Cloud maintenance is invisible to the end user. That is to say, there is no interruption to service, and you may not have noticed that the update has occurred. We refer to this as a Zero-Impact Maintenance event. However, on occasion we may need to temporarily interrupt service to perform significant infrastructure or backend upgrades. We call this a Service-Impact Maintenance event.

Edge Nodes

When you add an edge node to your Darcy Cloud project, three software components are installed on the node:

  • Edgeworx Agent interacts with Darcy Cloud to monitor the node’s status.
  • ioFog Agent communicates with the Darcy Cloud ioFog backend to manage microservices on your node.
  • Deviceplane Agent implements the keyless SSH access mechanism. It is also used by Darcy Cloud to perform updates to the agents themselves.

Node maintenance can affect one or more of these agents.

Node update process

This is a broad outline of the steps that can occur during node maintenance. Note that only some of these steps may occur for any particular maintenance event.

  • Darcy Cloud initiates the update process by opening a connection with Deviceplane Agent, and then executing an update script on the node via Deviceplane.
    • Note that a login session may appear in your node’s log files. This is the update process at work.
  • Edgeworx Agent:
    • Edgeworx Agent’s software components may be updated.
    • Edgeworx Agent’s configuration files may be modified.
    • The Edgeworx Agent service may be restarted.
  • ioFog Agent:
    • ioFog Agent’s software components may be updated.
    • ioFog Agent’s configuration files may be modified.
    • The ioFog Agent service may be restarted.
  • Deviceplane Agent:
    • Deviceplane Agent’s software components may be updated.
    • Deviceplane Agent’s configuration files may be modified.
    • The Deviceplane Agent service may be restarted.
  • What does not happen:
    • Your applications and microservices running on your nodes will not be stopped or restarted.
    • Your node (edge device) will not be restarted.
    • Other than the changes to the agents listed above, no other changes are made to your node.

Offline nodes

Sometimes a node will be offline during the maintenance period. What happens? When the node comes back online, the node’s Deviceplane Agent reestablishes its connection to Darcy Cloud. When Darcy Cloud observes that the node is back online, it will then initiate the deferred update process. The Deferred Maintenance Window is thirty days.

After that window closes - depending on the nature of that particular node update process - it may be necessary to re-register the node. From Darcy Cloud’s perspective, this effectively creates a new node. You would also need to re-deploy any microservices. Please contact Darcy Support if you need assistance with a node outside the deferred maintenance window.

Impact

Zero-Impact Maintenance

Zero-Impact Maintenance, as you might expect, has zero impact on service availability. Most often, this type of maintenance is to improve backend services or infrastructure. If there are user-facing changes, you will be able to find information on those changes in the changelog .

Service-Impact Maintenance

During Service-Impact Maintenance, there is interruption to service.

  • Darcy Cloud Portal will be unavailable. A visit to cloud.darcy.ai in your browser will return an “Undergoing Maintenance” page.
  • Darcy Cloud API routes will return a 503/Service Unavailable HTTP status code.
  • edgectl commands will return an error.

Any user-facing changes from the update will be noted in the changelog .

Schedule

We understand the importance of keeping our customers in the loop about upcoming maintenance. We have two classes of scheduled maintenance.

Regularly Scheduled Maintenance

For Regularly Scheduled Maintenance, you will receive an initial email notification at your account’s registered email address at least five business days before the maintenance window. If you have concerns about the maintenance event impacting your operations, please contact Darcy Support as early as possible.

Expedited Schedule Maintenance

For an Expedited Schedule Maintenance event, we aim to email you at least two days in advance. We realize that this is not a lot of time to prepare, so we make every effort to avoid expedited maintenance.

Steps

  • You will receive an initial notification email for either Regularly Scheduled or Expedited Schedule Maintenance.
  • You will be emailed a reminder the day before the maintenance window.
  • You will be emailed again when the maintenance window opens.
  • And, finally, you will be emailed one more time when the maintenance event concludes.
  • Note that at any time, you can learn more about service availability at status.darcy.ai .
  • After the maintenance event concludes, you can find out about any changes or new features in the changelog .
  • At any time, you can check on the availability of new edgectl versions by executing edgectl version.

Feedback

If you have any feedback about our process, feel free to start a discussion over at discuss.darcy.ai . If you have a concern about an upcoming maintenance event impacting your operations, please reach out as early as possible to Darcy Support .

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