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Today, I will talk to you about the important steps to remember before upgrading the Linux production server, which may not be well understood by many people. in order to make you understand better, the editor has summarized the following contents for you. I hope you can get something according to this article.

Server security is a top priority for every system administrator. In addition to having third-party security tools (such as firewalls, DDoS protection, etc.), it is also extremely important to keep all code on the production server up to date.

When your application is in production, upgrading it is riskier. If your server is Linux-driven, the Linux distribution will release new versions from time to time. Each major release contains bug fixes, security updates, and new tools.

Upgrading the production server without any preparation is a big mistake. Unprepared upgrades can result in permanent data loss, server performance degradation, and customer loss. In this article, I'll list some important steps to take before starting a server upgrade.

What to do before upgrading the production server

Recently, I upgraded one of the client servers, which is the Ubuntu server. His e-commerce site has received considerable traffic and has been around for nearly a year.

I decided to upgrade his server from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 LTS. The actual upgrade took about 30 minutes, but the preparation took longer. As a result, the upgrade went smoothly without any downtime.

1. Prepare a full backup

Backing up only the website or the entire server should be a routine task. Before upgrading, make sure that your website is fully backed up either in the cloud or locally.

If you use any other CMS, create a backup of the application. If you are using a virtual host, you should have an option to create a full backup of the entire server.

After the server is fully backed up, you can proceed to the next step.

two。 Software compatibility

Newer Linux distributions may have removed or replaced tools used by your website or CMS. In general, there is nothing wrong with popular CMS (such as WordPress). If you have a custom CMS that may be using a library, make sure that the custom CMS still exists in the newer version of the operating system.

3. Set up a temporary server

The whole purpose of this article is to upgrade the real-time server without downtime. When the server is being upgraded, it may restart multiple times, so the site will not open during the restart. The best way to avoid this is to create a separate server and restore your site on the new server.

You can restore the backup on the new server and point the domain name to the new server temporarily. During the upgrade process, visitors will visit the temporary site instead of the main site.

We have described in detail how to migrate a WordPress site from one server to another.

4. Set up load balancer

Load balancing is the best way to manage site traffic, making sure that every visitor can access the site no matter what happens on the server. If you receive a lot of traffic on the site, load balancing may cost a little, but it's worth using.

During the upgrade, we can use the advanced load balancing service and redirect all traffic to our temporary server without changing the domain settings.

Enter the IP addresses of the main website server and the temporary server in the load balancer. After successfully connecting the server to the load balancer, it will redirect visitors to a website that does not work properly.

If your primary server does not respond during the update, the load balancer will provide temporary websites for visitors. After the server is upgraded, we can delete the temporary server.

5. Start a server upgrade when the site traffic is the least

Even if the above points can prevent your service from being interrupted, it's best to start upgrading when you receive the least amount of traffic on your site. You can use Google Analytics (Analytics) or any other site analytics service associated with the site.

Summary

After the server is upgraded, you can point the domain name to the primary server and delete the temporary server in a few hours. If you use load balancer instead of changing the domain settings, you can delete the temp server and remove the IP address of the temp server from the load balancer.

The failure of the upgrade will cause great problems to your service. It is important to plan a server upgrade and prevent any data loss during the upgrade.

After reading the above, do you have any further understanding of the important steps to remember before upgrading the Linux production server? If you want to know more knowledge or related content, please follow the industry information channel, thank you for your support.

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