Patching Red Hat Linux 8.x for Jira and Confluence Datacenter

Question

I've got a Jira Datacenter and Confluence Datacenter, each running on Red Hat 8.6 across two systems for load-balancing.  I need to patch the host OS systems, so I need some advice.  My first thought is that I need to bring the Jira/Confluence applications down, snapshot all 4 systems, backup the databases, and then I can update the OS hosts.  But is all that necessary?   Load balancing should mean that I can bring down the applications on one node at a time, patch the system, reboot it, and then start the application again.  Any thoughts on this?  I want to go with the least risky option.    Thanks for the help!

Michael Johnston_noary7 · Answer

Thank you for the reply, Clark.

I have a sandbox, but unfortunately, it only comprises of 1 server per application instead of 2.  I've tested the OS patching on those, and they come back up fine.  I think you're right in that I should go the safer route and just shut everything down and snapshot.  I'd probably feel better about it too.

Clark Everson · Answer

Hi @Michael Johnston

do you have a test instance? If not I really would recommend having a test instance where it’s a mirror of your configuration even for data center environments

We even at red hat do it this way for all our upgrades and we do it the method you mention. We use openshift however.

so in practice doing one node at a time and upgrading rhel should be fine but I couldn’t suggest doing it for your specific instance without the exact premise being tested

Regardless of which oath you chose it should be tested. The shutting the entire instance down is the safer route, and while it shouldn’t be necessary if you don’t have a test instance and don’t have a way to set it up then that would be the way. However I can’t stress enough the importance of a test instance configured just like production.