Maintenance and Upgrades
EC maintains the CA servers, HSMs, portal and publication services. This page explains how planned and emergency maintenance is handled and what the customer should expect.
Planned maintenance
- Planned maintenance is announced by email to the customer's named contacts.
- Notice period: as defined in the subscription agreement.
- Standard maintenance window: weekends, outside business hours (US Central Time).
- Planned maintenance is excluded from the availability commitment in Service Level Agreements.
Note: CRLs and CA certificates already published to Azure Blob Storage stay available during CA or portal maintenance, so existing certificates continue to validate. EC schedules maintenance so that no CRL expires during the window.
Emergency changes
Security patches and fixes for incidents may be applied outside the standard window. EC informs the named contacts as early as possible and records the change.
Upgrades
| Component | Who upgrades | Customer action |
|---|---|---|
| CA servers, HSM firmware, publication services | EC | None |
| Self-Service Portal | EC | Review the release notes for new features |
| Enrollment Gateway | EC provides the installer; the customer installs it on its servers | Install new gateway versions within the timeframe advised by EC in the release notes |
| CEP, NDES, Windows Server | Customer | Patch under the customer's own process |
Changes are listed in the Release Notes. Current service status is shown on the portal dashboard; see Operation Status.