Mute and active timings vs silences

The function of Mute timing and active timing differs from silences, as they are two are distinct methods to suppress notifications. They do not prevent alert rules from being evaluated or stop alert instances from appearing in the user interface; they only prevent notifications from being created.

The following table highlights the key differences of mute timing and active timing compared with silences.

	Mute timing and active timing	Silence
Setup	Created and then added to notification policies	Matches alerts using labels to determine whether to silence them
Period	Uses time interval definitions that can repeat periodically	Has a fixed start and end time

When to use mute timings

Use mute timing for predictable, recurring time periods when you don't want to receive notifications:

• Regular maintenance windows (for example, every Sunday from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM)
• Non-business hours (for example, nights and weekends)
• Scheduled deployments or known change windows
• Regular testing periods

When to use silences

Use silences for one-time or as-needed suppression of notifications:

• Active incident response (suppress notifications while investigating)
• Immediate suppression of a specific alert or group of alerts
• One-time maintenance or deployment events
• Temporarily suppress alerts for specific services or components