# Production upgrades - correct procedure to follow

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/production-upgrades-correct-procedure-to-follow/399550
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [30 במרץ,‏ 2026,‏ 9:27am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/production-upgrades-correct-procedure-to-follow/399550 "2026-03-30T09:27:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
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### Author: ![stevejr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/stevejr/32/292622_2.png) [@stevejr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stevejr)
#### Post date: [30 במרץ,‏ 2026,‏ 9:27am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/production-upgrades-correct-procedure-to-follow/399550/1 "2026-03-30T09:27:26Z")

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Hi,

I am about to upgrade our production discourse server (we self-host on EC2 as per the official installation instructions) and wanted to confirm the recommended approach.

We do not have the upgrade button enabled in the UI and so it will be done on the EC2 instance. Now, I believe there are 2 main ways to do this:

- Rebuild our EC2 server which will pull a fresh copy of the discourse\_docker GitHub repo and utilise the templates there i.e. `web.template.yml` is currently referencing base image `discourse/base:2.0.20260209-1300`. This approach would remove the current running server and start the new one.
- Login to the existing EC2 server and perform the following commands to rebuild the current image and restart the container:
  - `./launcher rebuild app`

I have 2 questions:

1. Which approach should be used for normal maintenance?
2. If we perform the rebuild app command does that still pull the `main` branch for the discourse\_docker repo?

I have read the [https://releases.discourse.org](https://releases.discourse.org) site and can see that version `2026.3.0` is not released yet and my understanding is that we should not use the latest of main versions of a release in production as they are still undergoing active development.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

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