// Module included in the following assemblies:
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// assembly-maintenance-time-windows.adoc

[id='con-maintenance-time-windows-overview-{context}']
= Maintenance time windows overview

In most cases, the Cluster Operator only updates your Kafka or ZooKeeper clusters in response to changes to the corresponding `Kafka` resource.
This enables you to plan when to apply changes to a `Kafka` resource to minimize the impact on Kafka client applications.

However, some updates to your Kafka and ZooKeeper clusters can happen without any corresponding change to the `Kafka` resource.
For example, the Cluster Operator will need to perform a rolling restart if a CA (certificate authority) certificate that it manages is close to expiry.

While a rolling restart of the pods should not affect _availability_ of the service (assuming correct broker and topic configurations), it could affect _performance_ of the Kafka client applications.
Maintenance time windows allow you to schedule such spontaneous rolling updates of your Kafka and ZooKeeper clusters to start at a convenient time.
If maintenance time windows are not configured for a cluster then it is possible that such spontaneous rolling updates will happen at an inconvenient time, such as during a predictable period of high load.

