Ubuntu out of date on my digital ocean server.

So I have a digital ocean server set up using laravel forge and I use envoyer for deployment. I recently logged into my application server and saw that ubuntu is at it endoflife and I need to update. The thing is ... my app is running for people around the world so there is usually always someone on. I'm afraid that if I go to update it there might be a problem and the site will go down for an undetermined amount of time.

My questions are:

Is it ok to update a server like this while it is running? (I assume there will be downtime at some point.)
What is the "best practice way" to go about updating a server with no application downtime. Remember I'm using forge + digitalocean and envoyer.

Thanks in advance

jekinney

10 years ago

Level 47

I would test locally first so the update goes smoothly. Secondly I would suggest setting up another server and scale horizontally let it sit for a day or two and then update your main server. Once done you should be able to delete the new server.

1 like

Drfraker

10 years ago

Level 28

@jekinney In order to scale horizontally would I need a 3rd server in front to act as a load balancer? Also I'm not sure how the ssl certificate would work in that case.

I'm currently looking at pagodabox or cloudways just because I want to have some of this stuff managed for me. Any thoughts on either of those services?

[email protected]

10 years ago

Level 2

What about spinning up another box as a staging etc. If all goes well, may make that the main PROD box, sync data etc and migrate to it and then retire old box.

OS upgrades like that often cause surprises!

bashy

10 years ago

Level 65

I've dist-upgraded Debian (7->8) before and it had no downtime but I would definitely do some sort of failover IP switch :P

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