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+..
+  Copyright 2021 Canonical Ltd.
+
+  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
+  Unported License.
+  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
+
+..
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+
+=========================
+Deferred Service Restarts
+=========================
+
+When a charm or package is upgraded services are restarted. This can impact the
+data plane causing outages. This spec is aimed at giving the cloud operator the
+option of deferring these restarts to a later, more convenient, time.
+
+Problem Description
+===================
+
+One example of the issue would be a charm upgrade which includes a minor
+template change. Charm upgrades are executed on all units of an application
+simultaneously (the cloud operator has no control over this). The charms are
+designed to restart services when configuration files are changed so the same
+set of services, across all units, will be simultaneously restarted.
+
+Another example is when a package update is triggered by the charm, it may be
+useful to defer any service restarts until after a lengthy package update
+completes.
+
+Proposed Change
+===============
+
+Add charm configuration option to control automatic service restarts.
+
+.. code:: yaml
+
+    enable-auto-restarts:
+      type: boolean
+      default: True
+      description: |
+        Allow the charm and packages to restart services automatically when
+        required
+
+Add charm action to run service restarts.
+
+.. code:: yaml
+
+    restart-services:
+      description: |
+        Restarts services this charm manages.
+      params:
+        deferred-only:
+          type: boolean
+          default: false
+          description: |
+            Only restart deferred services.
+        services:
+          type: string
+          default: ""
+          description: |
+            Optional space seperated list of services to restart. If unset
+            then it applies to all services the charm controls.
+    show-deferred-restarts:
+        description: |
+            Show the outstanding restarts
+
+
+If a charm has `enable-auto-restarts` disabled this will be reflected in the
+charms workload status message. The starts that have been requested, but
+deferred, by either the charm or a package update can be seen by running
+the `show-deferred-restarts` action.
+
+To block restarts, charms will first check whether `enable-auto-restarts`
+has been disabled and only perform the restart if permitted. Ideally preventing
+services from being stopped or restarted would be done within systemd but this
+does not seem to be possible in a clean way. Relying on the charm to police
+itself is not ideal as there are many places a restart command can emanate from
+and there is always the risk that a future charm update will introduce a
+restart call that does not honour `enable-auto-restarts`.
+
+Packages may try and restart a service during an update. To stop this from
+happening a custom `/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d` script will be installed to block
+the package changes from causing any restarts. Charms will indicate which
+services they want to block restarts for by writing a file to
+`/etc/policy-rc.d`.  `/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d` will collect all the files from
+`/etc/policy-rc.d` to construct a list of services which are not permitted to
+be restarted.
+
+The flow for deferring restarts:
+
+#. Operator updates application to set `enable-auto-restarts=False`
+#. A `/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d` file is written
+#. A charm specific file is placed in `/etc/policy-rc.d` which list which
+   services should be blocked from restarting.
+
+The flow for re-enabling restarts:
+
+#. Operator updates application to set `enable-auto-restarts=True`
+#. The charm specific file is removed from `/etc/policy-rc.d`
+#. Optionally, the operator runs the `restart-services` action against each
+   application unit.
+
+The existing `Pause` and `Resume` actions will continue to operate as they
+do now irrespective of the value of `enable-auto-restarts`
+
+Alternatives
+------------
+
+The problem could be handled if Juju were to implement a feature allowing charm
+updates to be performed on a unit by unit basis.
+
+Implementation
+==============
+
+Assignee(s)
+-----------
+
+Primary assignee:
+  gnuoy
+
+Gerrit Topic
+------------
+
+Use Gerrit topic "deferred-restarts" for all patches related to this spec.
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    git-review -t deferred-restarts
+
+Work Items
+----------
+
+* Write `policy-rc.d` script and add to charm-helpers
+* Write functions in charm-helpers for managing the masking of services
+  and files in `/etc/policy-rc.d`.
+* Each charm will need to add the new action and configuration option and the
+  charm will need to gate any service interupting restarts on the value of
+  `enable-auto-restarts` in a similar way to the existing `is_unit_paused_set`
+
+Repositories
+------------
+
+No new repositories are required.
+
+Documentation
+-------------
+
+The new actions will need to be documented in the charm-guide and the upgrade
+sections updated.
+
+Security
+--------
+
+None
+
+Testing
+-------
+
+The regularly scheduled upgrade testing would be a good place to test this
+feature.
+
+Dependencies
+============
+
+None