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Downtimes

Using Syncer rules and host attributes, you can create flexible scheduled downtimes in Checkmk — managed in your CMDB and applied automatically.

Go to: Modules → Checkmk → Manage Downtimes

Configuration

Field Description
Start Day Select the day for the downtime from a list
Start Day Template Set the day as a Jinja template using short English names: mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, sun
Every How often to repeat, e.g. every 2nd occurrence of the start day
Every Template Set repeat frequency as a Jinja template. Results: day, workday, week, 1-5 or 1.-5.
Offset Days Number of days offset from the start day
Offset Template Offset in days as a Jinja template
Start Time H Start hour (Jinja, 24h format)
Start Time M Start minutes (Jinja)
End Time H End hour (Jinja, 24h format)
End Time M End minutes (Jinja)
Downtime Comment Comment for the downtime (Jinja supported)
Duration Start a flexible downtime with this duration (Jinja)

One-Time Downtime for Today

To set a downtime for the current day whenever a condition is met for a host:

  • Set Start Day to Today
  • Set Every to once

This is useful for triggering downtimes based on a CMDB flag or maintenance window attribute.

Timezones

Downtimes in Checkmk are timezone-aware. The times you enter in the UI use the timezone of the server or Docker container where the Syncer is installed. To override this for the exported downtimes, set the timezone in local_config.py:

import datetime

config = {
    'TIMEZONE': datetime.timezone.utc,
}

Command Line

./cmdbsyncer checkmk export_downtimes ACCOUNTNAME

The run ends with a status line Since 4.2 showing how many downtimes were created, how many already existed in Checkmk and how many failed — so a run where everything already exists no longer finishes silently. The same counts are recorded in the run's log entry.

Performance on large inventories

Since 4.2 The export reads all existing Checkmk downtimes in a single query instead of one request per host, so large inventories that previously appeared to hang now finish quickly. If a Checkmk/livestatus timeout occurs while reading downtimes, the real error is surfaced (and re-raised with --debug) instead of a generic failure.