When you guys need to upgrade the OS production server, do you do in-place upgrade or spin up a new VM?

Posted by PsyduckAF@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 13 comments

I've got a prod server running a bunch of SQL DBs and apps. Need to upgrade to Windows Server 22, but not sure whether to just upgrade the OS on the existing VM, or create a new VM and start the long process of re-installing everything, transferring the DBs, etc. What's best practice in this situation?

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13 Comments

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jpm0719@reddit

I just finished an in place upgrade on a 2012R2 SQL server to 2019. Went just fine. I have literally done hundreds and hundreds of in-place upgrades and don't recall ever having any show stopping or meaningful issues. If you just take a snapshot and have good backups you will have no trouble.

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PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

Amazing, sounds good. Thank you!

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jefurii@reddit

- Two servers (VMs), blue and green, production is blue. - Upgrade the green server. - Once that checks out switch the load balancer from blue to green. - Upgrade the blue server.

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cjcox4@reddit

Backup and snapshot. And then we upgrade. If all goes "south", revert to snapshot or restore from backup. If all goes well, remove snapshot. Backups are the "key" really. Good safety net. Because... Where possible, prior to the above, try to quiesce data going to DB. Otherwise, on restore or revert to snapshot, you'll have to figure out your data loss and/or integrity issues.

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kuldan5853@reddit

Also, if it's a seriously important machine: clone to pre-prod/test environment, upgrade copy, test copy for functionality after doing so, only THEN do a maintenance window and upgrade prod.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

>Backups are the "key" really. Good safety net. Because... Boss: why haven't you upgraded xy... Me: I no longer have access to the backups or VM, without that I don't want to chance doing a 3 major version update Boss: Has it gone bad before? Me: yes When: the last 2 updates I did Boss: why didn't i know about it Me: because I had access to what i needed to so there was no perceivable downtime... The conversation goes on but you get the drift...

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PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

Yeah exactly. Been through variations of this convo multiple times with upper management.

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PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

Nice, thanks man. Will do.

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kalakzak@reddit

Always a new deployment and they have to migrate. You mileage may vary but we've never had good success with in-place upgrades on anything 2012R2 and older. Now 2016 to 2019 to 2022 holds promise so when 2016 comes up to end of support we'll be tossing in an in-place upgrade option with some caveats: 1) Lower environments first with testing and validation. 2) If your production environment doesn't have a viable lower environment you get a new VM and get to migrate. Obviously good backups and snapshots are a must.

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PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

Yeah this is on-prem. I'll do a backup + snapshot and upgrade in place. Thanks man

When you guys need to upgrade the OS production server, do you do in-place upgrade or spin up a new VM?

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13 Comments

jpm0719@reddit

PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

jefurii@reddit

cjcox4@reddit

kuldan5853@reddit

anonymousITCoward@reddit

PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

kalakzak@reddit

horus-heresy@reddit

MekanicalPirate@reddit

tankerkiller125real@reddit

PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)