About upgrading Discourse from the Admin dashboard

Support

AI-generated summary

AkaiBukai inquired about upgrading Discourse from the Admin dashboard, specifically asking if it would result in downtime and if there were options for zero downtime upgrades.

Heliosurge shared their experience, stating that upgrading via the web interface did not cause downtime. However, Ed_S cautioned that dashboard upgrades are not always available or successful, and command-line upgrades may be necessary, which can result in 5 to 10 minutes of downtime, depending on the size of the data and host speed. Jagster noted that downtime can be closer to 20-30 minutes with standalone containers.

Heliosurge also mentioned that they had a successful command-line upgrade after experiencing issues with the Admin upgrade section, which may have been due to cache. For zero downtime upgrades, Ed_S mentioned an advanced setup involving separate web and data containers, which requires expertise.

1

Hello everybody,
I am running my self hosted instance since a couple of weeks and it seems there is an upgrade available in the admin dashboard (v3.1.0.beta2 +622 → v3.1.0.beta3 +13) and I wanted to know a couple of things about upgrading Discourse.
If I upgrade from the admin dashboard, will I have a downtime?
If it’s the case, is there some options I can enable in order to have zero downtime upgrade?

I installed Discourse using the guide in here: discourse/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub

Many thanks!

2

From my experience don’t believe there is downtime while upgrading via the web interface. I have clicked go back to site or now went back to reading posts once in awhile checking on upgrade status in the upgrade rab in Admin.

3

Note that a dashboard upgrade is not always available, and when it is available, it’s not always successful. You might find you need to do a command-line upgrade after all, so make sure you have the time to do that.

With a command-line upgrade, you can expect 5 to 10 mins of downtime, maybe more, depending on how big your data is and how fast your host.

There is an advanced setup which delivers zero downtime, or very short downtime - you’ll need expertise! I haven’t tried this.
Move from standalone container to separate web and data containers

4

20-30 minutes is closer reality than 5-10 mins with standalone container.

5

Yes I had an odf event recently where members said the loading slider was stuck in a loop. A command line upgrade fixed it. Hadn’t had this prior to thr new admin upgrade section.

Things were fine on my end I think due to cache.