Website Upgrade - Avoid Downtime

Posted by nolan.sipos on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by nolan.sipos
Published on 2012-09-24T01:28:34Z Indexed on 2012/09/24 3:40 UTC
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I have been requested to investigate how I can reduce the downtime of our website upgrades.

We maintain a DNN site with both public facing pages and member only pages. The member only pages are directly linked to our core application database while the public pages are not.

Our current process is to redirect website users as soon as the upgrade process begins, which includes

  • Backup of the Prod DB
  • Update Prod DB
  • Update Executables (Application)
  • Upgrade Website Application (If this requires an update)
  • Install Dependencies
  • Upgrade sub systems like communication engine and payment broker
  • Update various configuration files
  • Perform testing of systems
  • Restart all services
  • Allow access to site

This process can take from 2 to 8 hours depending on upgrade required, scripts to be run, size of database and number or portals.

My initial thoughts are to restrict users to read only pages and any update pages would be unavailable.

Could anyone please offer suggestions as to the best practices for what I would think to be a common problem so that we can reduce this down time and if we need infrastructure changes, I can put this to our technical department.

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