I have a site running on 10.04 and want to upgrade to 14.04 and I considering this clean option...

Create a new Linode with the standard 14.04LTS stack. Install all my files, setup MySQL, test everything on the new server, then when I am happy it all seems to work, simply swap the IP from my old Linode to the new One. I would block any remote/database updates before the move and do a full MySQL dump and restore it on the new Linode before switching the IP.

1, Is this a good approach?

2, How long does an IP Swap take?


Thanks for any feedback.

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Regards

Mark

Yes. I've done exactly the same procedure twice with no issues.



It's near-instantaneous, though when I last did it (more than a year ago) it was necessary to shutdown both Linodes before swapping IPs. Don't know if that has changed....

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sleddog

I second sleddog's comments, although I have only gone through the process once myself. Note that both Linodes need to be in the same datacenter.

Thirded. I upgraded from 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS earlier this year using the same approach. Worked flawlessly apart from the IP swap, which required a reboot of the new server to work. I contacted support and they supplied this command to run after swapping IPs instead of rebooting:

ifdown -a && ifup -a

If you're running Apache, don't forget that the virtual hosts etc syntax in version 2.4 (shipped with 14.04) has changed:

https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/upgrading.html