How should I prepare for maintenance on my Direct Connect connection?

Last updated: 2021-12-02

When a Direct Connect connection is down for maintenance, that connection can be down from a few minutes to a few hours. To prepare for this downtime, consider one or more of the following options:

• Request a redundant Direct Connect connection.
• Configure a virtual private network (VPN) connection as a backup.

If you request multiple connections to the same co-location site from the same AWS account, then AWS configures them on separate routers. Maintenance is performed on a single router at a time, so one connection stays up.

If you request a redundant connection at a different co-location site, then you'll have a secondary connection if the first is down for maintenance, or if the entire co-location site is affected by an infrastructure event.

For information on requesting a new Direct Connect connection, see getting started with Direct Connect.

If you want a shorter-term or lower-cost solution, then configure an AWS Site-to-Site VPN as a failover option for a Direct Connect connection. Be sure that your use case or application can tolerate a lower bandwidth, because VPN connections generally offer less bandwidth than Direct Connect connections.

For more information, see How can I configure VPN as a backup for my AWS Direct Connect connection?