Each week, the CMS Cloud program provides a list of upcoming changes, maintenance windows, and updates to help customers build awareness and plan effectively and summarizes changes from the previous week.
This newsletter includes:
Completed change summary for the week of 12/18/2025
- 12/20/2025 - Enterprise Testing Services Maintenance
- 12/21/2025 - Upgrade Enterprise (OIT) Jira to version 10.3.15 in PROD
- 12/23/2025 - Azure Update Manager Patching - PROD
- 12/23/2025 - Marketplace SSM Patching - IMPL
- 12/23/2025 - Non-Marketplace PROD SSM Patching
To learn details about previous changes please go to the News and Updates section on cloud.cms.gov. (Secure Access required)
For Patching and Gold Image release schedule please view: Patching and Gold Image Release Calendar - 2025
Reminder - December Patching for end of December was moved up 1 day for the Holiday in Marketplace IMPL and Non-Marketplace Production environments.
12/28/2025 - Restart Production, Non-Prod and GovCloud HEC Servers
Summary:
The CMS Hybrid Cloud Splunk team will perform a rolling restart of the HEC Splunk Services. This will be performed weekly as part of Open Enrollment activities.
Actions we are taking:
- Restarting the Prod and Non-Prod HEC Forwarders
When is this happening?
Start Time: Sunday 12/28/2025 at 8:00 a.m. ET
End Time: Sunday, 12/28/2025 at 11:00 a.m. ET
Who will be impacted?
MITG and MSI
What is the impact?
This change has low impact. We have 45 prod HEC services and 18 Non-Prod and we only restart 5 at a time. The majority of load balanced HEC servers will be available as the restarts progress and they have sufficient capacity to handle all ingest streams.
Need help? We are here to support you.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to your assigned Hosting Coordinator. CMS IT Support can be reached via cloudsupport@cms.hhs.gov, or call (800) 562-1963, and is documented here at Support Page on cloud.cms.gov.
Reminder - Open Enrollment (OE13) - Moratorium
Summary:
To help ensure that we maintain good system performance and stability during CMS Healthcare Open Enrollment, an annual Moratorium period has been established to shift the scheduling of production changes into designated weekly maintenance windows which occurs on most Sundays.
Key Dates: (click to download the OE13 schedule and key dates file)
Start time: Wednesday, October 1st 2025 at 12:00 AM
End time: Friday, January 16th 2026 at 5:00 AM
November 1 – First Day of Open Enrollment (Saturday)
December 28 – Available Maintenance Window (Sunday 12:00 AM – 12:00 PM)
January 4 – Available Maintenance Window (Sunday 12:00 AM – 12:00 PM)
- Production patching for the December (Echo) cycle applies to zero-downtime components of Marketplace systems under the moratorium, and to all Marketplace systems not subject to the moratorium.
- Production components that do not support zero-downtime patching must not be patched during this window
January 10 - 16 – High Volume/Maintenance Period – No Maintenance (Before the deadline for 2/1/2026 coverage which ends on 1/16/2026, 5:00 AM when OE Ends for the FFE due to Alaska/Hawaii Extension)
- No planned down-time – all Marketplace systems should be available
- No infrastructure changes should be implemented
- All the Security Scans should be paused 1/13/2026, 8:00 PM – 1/16/2026, 8:00 PM.
Who will be impacted:
Any Hybrid Cloud IT Operations team planning to make a change to a system supporting the CMS Healthcare Marketplace either directly or indirectly.
All Marketplace systems not subject to this moratorium guidance should continue to deploy Operating Systems patches during Open Enrollment. This includes:
- All patching cycles during Open Enrollment.
- Utilizing the CMS Hybrid Cloud managed patching service through AWS Systems Manager (SSM).
- If not subject to patching, the ADO will have to untag the instance as automation is not disabled.
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