Change Management and Maintenance

Change Management Policy

This Change Management Policy provides a standard method and procedure for handling and control of changes to minimise impact on service. It is based on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework.

Aligned with ITIL best practices, Equinix distinguishes between three different types of changes:

• standard
• normal
• emergency

Equinix uses reasonable efforts to notify customers at least 14 days prior to any service impacting maintenance. Emergency changes may be implemented with a shorter notice period in response to or to prevent an incident. Equinix will use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize disruption to Digital Services when performing scheduled maintenance.

Service impacting change windows are typically scheduled between 10pm and 6am in the time zone in which the infrastructure is located and where the maintenance will occur.

Maintenance activities are organised to minimize impact on both primary and secondary infrastructure simultaneously.

As a standard practice, maintenance on primary and secondary infrastructure is typically actioned under a separate window. In this way customers who deploy redundant instances should not experience a complete service outage and only a loss of resilience.

Similarly, it is standard practice for Equinix to separate service impacting work between maintenance zones.

Maintenance Zones

Equinix has implemented the concept of maintenance zones for Equinix Fabric and Network Edge to enhance the availability of geo-redundant deployments and bring greater predictability to scheduled maintenance.

Metros are organized into two complementary maintenance zones (green and yellow) and service impacting maintenance will occur in only one zone at a time, to minimize potential service impact.

Maintenance Zones do not replace primary/secondary service architecture, nor do they add an additional layer of redundancy. Instead, they enhance availability by applying scheduling discipline across change activities impacting customer-facing platforms. In broader industry practice, maintenance zoning aligns with the concept of “operational blast radius control,” where change domains are intentionally segmented to prevent concurrent risk exposure across redundant infrastructures.

The global distribution of metros and their maintenance zones is as follows:

Metro Name	Metro Code	Maintenance Zone
Abidjan	AB	Yellow
Accra	AC	Green
Abu Dhabi	AD	Yellow
Adelaide	AE	Yellow
Amsterdam	AM	Green
Atlanta	AT	Yellow
Barcelona	BA	Green
Bogota	BG	Yellow
Boston	BO	Green
Brisbane	BR	Yellow
Bordeaux	BX	Green
Canberra	CA	Green
Chicago	CH	Yellow
Calgary	CL	Yellow
Chennai	CN	Green
Culpepper	CU	Yellow
Dallas	DA	Green
Dublin	DB	Yellow
Washington D.C.	DC	Green
Denver	DE	Green
Dusseldorf	DU	Green
Dubai	DX	Green
Enschede	EN	Yellow
Frankfurt	FR	Yellow
Genoa	GN	Green
Geneva	GV	Yellow
Helsinki	HE	Green
Hamburg	HH	Green
Hong Kong	HK	Green
Houston	HO	Yellow
Istanbul	IL	Green
Jakarta	JK	Green
Kamloops	KA	Green
Los Angeles	LA	Green
London	LD	Green
Lagos	LG	Green
Lima	LM	Yellow
Lisbon	LS	Green
Manchester	MA	Yellow
Mumbai	MB	Yellow
Muscat	MC	Yellow
Madrid	MD	Yellow
Melbourne	ME	Green
Miami	MI	Green
Milan	ML	Yellow
Manila	MN	Green
Monterrey	MO	Green
Montreal	MT	Yellow
Munich	MU	Green
Mexico City	MX	Yellow
New York	NY	Yellow
Osaka	OS	Yellow
Ottawa	OT	Green
Paris	PA	Yellow
Perth	PE	Green
Philadelphia	PH	Green
Rio de Janeiro	RJ	Green
Seattle	SE	Green
Singapore	SG	Yellow
Shanghai	SH	Yellow
Saint John	SJ	Yellow
Stockholm	SK	Yellow
Seoul	SL	Yellow
Sofia	SO	Yellow
Sao Paulo	SP	Yellow
Santiago	ST	Green
Silicon Valley	SV	Yellow
Sydney	SY	Yellow
Toronto	TR	Green
Tokyo	TY	Green
Vancouver	VA	Yellow
Warsaw	WA	Yellow
Winnipeg	WI	Green
Zurich	ZH	Green
Zwolle	ZW	Yellow