diff --git a/playbooks/manual/stop_pkgdb.yml b/playbooks/manual/stop_pkgdb.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..02666c2169
--- /dev/null
+++ b/playbooks/manual/stop_pkgdb.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+- name: verify the frontend and stop it
+  hosts: pkgdb:pkgdb-stg
+  user: root
+  vars_files:
+   - /srv/web/infra/ansible/vars/global.yml
+   - "/srv/private/ansible/vars.yml"
+   - /srv/web/infra/ansible/vars/{{ ansible_distribution }}.yml
+  handlers:
+  - include: "{{ handlers }}/restart_services.yml"
+
+  pre_tasks:
+  - name: tell nagios to shush w.r.t. apache
+    nagios: action=downtime minutes=90 service=host host={{ inventory_hostname_short }}{{ env_suffix }}
+    delegate_to: noc01.phx2.fedoraproject.org
+    ignore_errors: true
+
+  tasks:
+  - name: Stop apache
+    service: name="httpd" state=stopped