How do you notify users of upcoming downtime?
For a blog or regular website, I used to just push the updates - no need to warn anyone! But for a SaaS, a user can be in the middle of a task that writes data..so it's more annoying to pull the plug. I think my downtime is about 10 mins for the update to go through.
What's the best way to let people know?
Send an email? Update Instatus? Send a tweet? …
For me, an announcement on Twitter would be enough, especially if it's less than 10 minutes. And maybe do the update at night or at a time with not so many visitors. Annotation: I recommend a workflow with zero downtime deployments. It's worth it, especially for websites with lots of visitors/traffic.
@locopinio thanks for the thoughts, yeah zero downtime deployments would be best!
Hey Graeme, I would suggest mention about the downtime in all the communication tools you are using such as email, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. A user who has missed the email might see the notice in Twitter and be prepared for it.
The company I used to work for never did pushes on Friday and aimed to do early in the morning before majority of the users wake up to use the application.
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