How do you maintain your servers over the years ?

[Phinous]

Hi everybody

I'm using ispCP from nearly 6 years, from the version 1.0.1 if I'm remember, under Debian Sarge

Since many years, I'm hosting more and more websites on several servers.
My biggest one is hosting 70 websites (yes, I'm a small hoster )

One day (a Christmas night to be precise), I was alone with nothing to do.
So I decide to update ispCP from 1.0.1 to 1.0.3 (not sure for the versions, doesn't matter for the story).
At this time, my server hosted almost 40 websites.

The update failed.

Yahoooo ! A christmas night, 40 websites offline. Nice gift !
Hopefully, majority of my customers don't care about their websites at this moment.
But I was a little bit stressed anyway.
Who should help me a christmas night ????
Lucky me, Nuxwin was there and we passed few hours together to fix the ispCP update and migrate 2 of my servers from Sarge to Lenny
Thanks again to him !

But during the days afters, I had to fix several vicious bugs (problematic mails sended from a website form hosted on other mail host etc...).
It was a lot of stress !
The difficult life of a hoster : it's very cool when it's working well, but it's the apocalypse when your customers asking you why their websites are offline!!!


So... now, I have 70 websites on my server, with an "old" version of ispCP, with maybe security holes. The server is still running Lenny, because I'm also a little be stressed to upgrade it to Squeeze. Today, Lenny is not supported anymore, with potentialy security hole in next months

I'm thinking regulary to this specific "hoster problem".
In fact, it's look like I have only the following choices:
- keep my obsolete working server until a hacker come in (and stress later, without the choice)
- stress during one night and several days to make an update of the panel and the system, and this, regulary, on each new version
- setup regulary a new server with lastest debian and lastest ispCP, and migrate slowly everybody (or not), without stress

For now, I choose the last one...

And you, how to you feel when you want to update your panel ?
Do you have tips to avoid stress and maintain the security on your server ?

[christinacena]

Maintenance and you have care.That's what i can say.

[Phinous]

up

[BattloXX]

Hi, i have virtualized my Server to a VMware ESX. Now i can take Snapshots and can try different things to update the ISPCP or Debian.

You can convert your live machine, that is no Problem with the Machine Converter from VMware.

This works very good an i had no problems since the ESX is up.
Very good is also the Option to Download the vmdk an play it at home to test everything and write a guide to update.