Maintenance Frequency for Azure API Management service resources for Developer Tier

Apurva Pathak 890 Reputation points

Hi all,

We're running Non-Production environments of few of our applications using Developer Tier of Azure APIM. In past few days we've observed that the interruption in APIM availability has started to occur very frequently i.e. ~11 days out of last 18 days citing planned maintenance/ unplanned reboots.

Is there any way to know when MS choose to plan a maintenance if possible at all, and is there any to get a prior notification around that? I tried searching for docs over internet but no luck.

Many Thanks!

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2 answers

  1. Pravallika KV 17,025 Reputation points • Microsoft External Staff • Moderator

    Hi @Apurva Pathak ,

    Thanks for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A.

    Based on the info you shared, the key thing to know is:

    1. Developer tier isn’t backed by an SLA (and is more prone to downtime)

    Azure API Management’s Developer tier is intended for evaluation, not production. The service documentation notes that Developer tier (notably with only one role instance) is prone to service down issues during platform or service upgrades, and no SLA is guaranteed during service upgrade.

    So even if Microsoft doesn’t give you a fixed “maintenance schedule” for each event, the Developer tier is inherently more susceptible to interruptions.

    1. Microsoft doesn’t say you can schedule/choose upgrades, but you can get notifications

    For APIM service upgrades/maintenance, you generally can’t schedule the upgrade yourself. However, you can receive notifications via Azure Resource Health / Service Health.

    The docs state that API Management sends notifications of known service events (example: global upgrade or OS patching) to Azure Resource Health monitoring. You can set up a Resource Health Alert to be notified of availability/upgrade details.

    Important note from the docs: resource health alerts may not be sent for Developer SKU—so you may need to validate whether you’re getting the alerts you expect for your specific setup.

    1. What to do to reduce the impact

    If your workload needs consistent availability, the documented recommendation is to host production workloads on Basic/Standard/Premium tiers (or other skus configured for high availability), because those provide minimum two role instances and a load balancer per unit, which helps avoid downtime during platform upgrades.

    1. Practical way to investigate what’s happening

    Since your timestamps show repeated “health events,” the best troubleshooting path is:

    • Check whether the “availability” incidents correspond to service upgrade/OS patching signals in Azure Service Health / Resource Health.
    • If you can’t rely on alerts due to Developer SKU limitations, consider using Activity Log / Service Health notification patterns (so you still get notified when possible).

    Hope this helps!

    If the resolution was helpful, kindly take a moment to click on 👁 User's image
    and click on Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

    1. Pravallika KV 17,025 Reputation points • Microsoft External Staff • Moderator

      @Apurva Pathak , Following up to see if the provided answer was helpful. If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer =>Yes, and upvote it. If you have any further queries do let us know.

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  2. AI answer

    For Azure API Management, maintenance behavior and the options to control or get notified depend on the tier.

    For Basic, Standard, and Premium (classic) tiers:

    • Service performs regular upgrades and other maintenance.
    • It is possible to customize when in the update process an instance receives an update and to specify a daily 8‑hour maintenance window when updates are applied.
    • Updates are rolled out in phases across regions; within a region, Premium instances receive updates later than other tiers.
    • Update timing and status can be tracked via:
      • Azure Activity log, which emits a Scheduled maintenance event when an update begins. Alerts can be configured on this event.
      • Announcements on the API Management GitHub releases page.

    However, the available documentation explicitly describes these maintenance‑window and update‑group controls only for Basic, Standard, and Premium (classic) tiers. The Developer tier is not listed among the tiers that support customizing when the instance receives updates or specifying a maintenance window. That means Developer tier instances do not expose the same level of control over maintenance timing as the higher tiers.

    To gain more predictable maintenance behavior and control over when updates are applied, the documented option is to use one of the tiers that supports service update settings (Basic, Standard, or Premium (classic)) and configure:

    1. An appropriate update group (for example, test instance early, production instance late in the cycle).
    2. A daily maintenance window aligned with low‑traffic periods.
    3. Activity log alerts on the Scheduled maintenance event to receive prior notifications when an update starts.

    For visibility into broader Azure platform maintenance that might affect API Management (including Developer tier), planned maintenance events and impacted resources can be monitored via Azure Service Health’s Planned maintenance experience, and alerts can be configured there as well.

    References:

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