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 6/18/2025
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
6/27/2025 - Reduce Indexed Data Retention in Cloud Splunk to 3 Years
Summary:
The CMS Hybrid Cloud Splunk team will be reducing indexed data retention to 3 years from 3.5 years as part of bringing Cloud Splunk into M-21-31 compliance.
Actions we are taking:
- Reduce the retention policy to 3 years
- Monitor indexer activities
When is this happening?
Start Time: Friday, 6/27/2025 at 8:00 p.m. ET
End Time: Saturday, 6/28/2025 at 4:00 p.m. ET
Who will be impacted?
DRaaS ITSI, MITG MSI, EMM and CCIC search heads peered to the Splunk environment.
What is the impact?
There is no major impact to users. During the change window there can be latency with Splunk searches and dashboards rendering slowly.
6/28/2025 - Enterprise Testing Services Maintenance
Summary:
In order to keep up to date with the latest versions and security advisories, the CMS Hybrid Cloud team will be performing maintenance updates on Enterprise Testing tools.
Actions we are taking:
- Update Selenium Box Hub and Executors with the latest Amazon Linux 2023 Gold Image for CMS Cloud
When is this happening?
Start time: Saturday 6/28/2025 at 9:00 a.m. ET
End time: Saturday 6/28/2025 at 11:59 a.m. ET
Who will be impacted?
All AWS Commercial and GovCloud customers of Selenium Box.
What is the impact?
Customers should expect downtime for the service as instances are restarted within the maintenance window.
6/29/2025 - Restart Production and Non-Prod HEC Servers
Summary:
The CMS Hybrid Cloud Splunk team will perform a rolling restart of the HEC Splunk Services. Splunk professional services identified some new token configuration that will need to be remediated to ensure the stability of the Splunk HEC Forwarders. They recommended that we restart the HEC Forwarders weekly until all the newly identified token configurations are corrected.
Actions we are taking:
- Restarting the Prod and Non-Prod HEC Forwarders
When is this happening?
Start Time: Sunday, 6/29/2025 at 12:00 p.m. ET
End Time: Sunday, 6/29/2025 at 3:00 p.m. ET
Who will be impacted?
MITG and MSI
What is the impact?
There is no expected impact. We have 45 prod HEC services and 18 Non-Prod and we are only restarting 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.
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