Schedule - Amazon CloudWatch

Schedule

Specifies when and how long an alarm mute rule is active.

The schedule uses either a cron expression for recurring mute windows or an at expression for one-time mute windows. When the schedule activates, the mute rule mutes alarm actions for the specified duration.

Contents

Duration

The length of time that alarms remain muted when the schedule activates. The duration must be between 1 and 50 characters in length.

Specify the duration using ISO 8601 duration format with a minimum of 1 minute (PT1M) and maximum of 15 days (P15D).

Examples:

  • PT4H - 4 hours for weekly system maintenance

  • P2DT12H - 2 days and 12 hours for weekend muting from Friday 6:00 PM to Monday 6:00 AM

  • PT6H - 6 hours for monthly database maintenance

  • PT2H - 2 hours for nightly backup operations

  • P7D - 7 days for annual company shutdown

The duration begins when the schedule expression time is reached. For recurring schedules, the duration applies to each occurrence.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 50.

Required: Yes

Expression

The schedule expression that defines when the mute rule activates. The expression must be between 1 and 256 characters in length.

You can use one of two expression formats:

  • Cron expressions - For recurring mute windows. Format: cron(Minutes Hours Day-of-month Month Day-of-week)

    Examples:

    • cron(0 2 * * *) - Activates daily at 2:00 AM

    • cron(0 2 * * SUN) - Activates every Sunday at 2:00 AM for weekly system maintenance

    • cron(0 1 1 * *) - Activates on the first day of each month at 1:00 AM for monthly database maintenance

    • cron(0 18 * * FRI) - Activates every Friday at 6:00 PM

    • cron(0 23 * * *) - Activates every day at 11:00 PM during nightly backup operations

    The characters *, -, and , are supported in all fields. English names can be used for the month (JAN-DEC) and day of week (SUN-SAT) fields.

  • At expressions - For one-time mute windows. Format: at(yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm)

    Examples:

    • at(2024-05-10T14:00) - Activates once on May 10, 2024 at 2:00 PM during an active incident response session

    • at(2024-12-23T00:00) - Activates once on December 23, 2024 at midnight during annual company shutdown

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 256.

Required: Yes

Timezone

The time zone to use when evaluating the schedule expression. The time zone must be between 1 and 50 characters in length.

Specify the time zone using standard timezone identifiers (for example, America/New_York, Europe/London, or Asia/Tokyo).

If you don't specify a time zone, UTC is used by default. The time zone affects how cron and at expressions are interpreted, as well as start and expire dates you specify

Examples:

  • America/New_York - Eastern Time (US)

  • America/Los_Angeles - Pacific Time (US)

  • Europe/London - British Time

  • Asia/Tokyo - Japan Standard Time

  • UTC - Coordinated Universal Time

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 50.

Required: No

See Also

For more information about using this API in one of the language-specific AWS SDKs, see the following: