# Can you upgrade Discourse seamlessly if there is a breaking db change?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-you-upgrade-discourse-seamlessly-if-there-is-a-breaking-db-change/27175>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [April 3, 2015, 9:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-you-upgrade-discourse-seamlessly-if-there-is-a-breaking-db-change/27175 "2015-04-03T21:48:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![elberet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/elberet/32/122404_2.png) [@elberet](https://meta.discourse.org/u/elberet)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 10:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-you-upgrade-discourse-seamlessly-if-there-is-a-breaking-db-change/27175/12 "2015-04-03T22:30:25Z")

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Well… you could use a semantic versioning scheme for the schema versions:

- If the migration updates the major version, all workers must be taken down,
- if it updates the minor version, workers on the old version must be in read-only mode,
- and if only the patch version changes, workers can keep running throughout the migration.

If someone wants to maintain a huge Discourse cluster, they’ll know how to perform the upgrade, assuming that they have a custom tool that orchestrates all the `launcher`s on the machines involved…

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