Hi. First of all, I'm pretty new to server administration so I have a lot of newb questions.

We have 3 websites on Linode. It still hasn't been turned over to me yet so I don't have the specs yet. The websites are old (some still using HTML tables!) so we are developing a new website (which would cover all 3 websites). Sooner or later, we will have to update the Linode kernels. However, downtime is crucial. We'll have to eliminate or minimize downtime, else we'll be working on it overnight.

By updating the kernels, would the amount of data (70 Gb) that we have affect the time of reboot? In their documentation, they estimated 30 minutes: https://www.linode.com/docs/uptime/moni ... our-server

Would migration of server be better than updating it?

Thank you!

Updating the kernels (assuming you're using Linode supplied kernels) is simply a reboot which takes a minuteish. Resizing the server to a larger size, that takes time and depends on the size of your data.

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The Linode control panel allows you to switch IPs from two different machines in the same data center. It only takes a reboot.
So, you could prepare the new server in a new linode and when it's ready, you switch IPs and the new machine will become the real one.

Certain services (mysql, email) are continously generating new data, so you would have to plan carefully how to migrate those if you have them.

A reboot isn't required when adding, removing, or swapping IPs, fwiw. But, you will need to configure your Linux box to deal with it. Also, you may need to issue a gratuitous ARP or ping your (new?) gateway to get the switches in line.

-Chris