: Best process for upgrading a live server I just recently started at a new company, and their live server has PHP v5.2.6 (yes, circa 2008). A site I recently designed for them actually wouldn't

@Jennifer507

I think closetnoc's advice is good, and your plan is sound, but in the comments there, you mentioned that you're running on a VPS on linode already. Depending on your time frame, what's preventing you from spinning up another VPS on linode, provisioning it exactly as needed and switching over to it, then shutting down/destroying the old VM?

Is it just cost? I'd personally imagine that the time and cost saved in keeping you from moving the site twice would be significant. Still, I've worked for nonprofits, and understand the limitations when it comes to these kinds of costs. To make this more accurately address your question, the only hole I see, given your constraints and situation, is that you may have a more efficient option. I don't inherently see anything wrong with your plan otherwise.

Regardless, if it was me, and I was operating off of a VPS already, I'd try to clone the existing VPS as a starting point, make all the upgrades (again, all of them, as closetnoc recommends) and then switch it once.

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@Nimeshi995

Actually no. Except that if the site installs are from 2008, then there may be OS and other installs that may also have to be made and incompatibilities between them and the hardware. It is possible that the full suite of installs that you need to do at minimum may not work on that machine. Be prepared for that. Check for software upgrades that should also be done for security reasons if nothing else such as Apache, Linux, etc. It may be that upgrading the server hardware is required along with OS and other services. It has been my experience that hardware may be an issue but not always depending upon the level of hardware. It has also been my experience that dependencies between software always arises and that a blanket upgrade to solve security issues is always advisable during opportunities such as this.

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