Scheduled maintenance & software updates
In this page, we explain our approach on instance updates from the actual version to a new one.
When is an instance updated
The approach we have decided to follow for the management of all the instances is to update to major stable releases, unless there is a security or an unscheduled critical update. We have found this to be a more stable and secure approach. Minor updates might also break some things in the instance, which will force us to revert to the previous version and cause disruption and potential downtime to our Subscribers.
Instance update procedure
Due to potential downtime to the instance(s)we manage, we inform our Subscribers beforehand, at least five (5) business days before we proceed with an update.
Nextcloud update procedure:
Should you update on your own?
We encourage our subscribers that do their best to follow the security practices. One of these practices is to have every software you use up to date. But if every subscriber updates their instance when they feel, it can cause a lot of issues on a hosting provider side. The issues can be from simple to fix like an app not working on new releases, to the Nextcloud platform having a major bug that had escaped the QA. For issues with the Nextcloud apps the fix is somewhat simple we can revert to a known release, but for the entire platform Downgrading is not possible, and we can only go forward.
Our aproce on upgrades
For these reasons we test each major release on our test environment, and then if everything passes we inform you (our subscriber) that on this date we will update your instance. On this testing phase, we test major release or minor releases that contain vulnerability fixes. Vulnerability issues on Nextcloud are uncommon, but they still can happen once in a while. This is why we do our best to test and notify you in a timeline as short as humanly possible.
Our update procedure is fully automated (we let our automation code do the work) and ensure no human error is present while updating.
A bit of information on the Nextcloud releases:
The Nextcloud release schedule is Max-min releases, meaning that there are minor releases like 25.0.3 that can contain small improvements and fix stability issues or sometimes important security fixes. While major version like 25 can have big changes like the way they handle data or user management.
Scheduled maintenance
When we need to proceed with a software/platform update, we plan on a scheduled maintenance to your instance. In this case, the main contact person responsible for the Subscription package will be notified by email (at least). We usually work on planned instance updates on weekends (Saturday to be more specific), unless there is a request from one of our Subscribers to act differently.
In certain cases and where applicable, we will make sure to also add a notification notice (see below) for the day and time that the scheduled maintenance will be implemented.
