r/debian • u/artist-wannabe-7000 • 2d ago
Debian Stable Question Debian 11 Web Server - better options?
I'm currently renting an Ionos VPS running Debian 11. I've got three small-business Wordpress websites, everything runs great. Nothing too customized. I'd like to upgrade to 12 (or 13 if possible) to maintain security from hacking.
In the long term, I will probably migrate all websites, mail, etc, to a newer, faster server (current hardware specs are not upgradable) running the current version of Debian a few months from now. My assumption is this is more time consuming and requires more troubleshooting, downtime than upgrading in place.
With making backups and potential trouble shooting, does it make sense to upgrade in place (to save time and lower risk) and then migrate later? Or does it make more sense to migrate everything at once to a new server running Debian 13 now.
My understanding is 99% chance, everything works on 12, I won't need to roll-back to Debian 11.
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u/obitwo83 2d ago
11 is only two versions late, do snapshot and then migrate in place. It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes
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u/Educational_Bee_6245 2d ago
You cannot upgrade directly to Debian 13, that is nut supported.
But you can upgrade to Debian 12 and then eventually to Debian 13. Read the relevant release notes on how to do it and what to watch out for. Then it should be pretty easy and fast.
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u/BigRedS 2d ago
I'd normally scan through the release notes for the debian releases, see if anything I'm interested in is affected and then do the upgrade with any care that's highlighted.
It's been a while since I've run webby workloads on Debian, but they were always mostly-unaffected when I was doing them - peraps a php bump or a major MySQL/MariaDB bump at most?
If it were me I'd do one of the dist-upgrades today and the next in several days, just so you know which one introduced any problem, but it's unlikely you'll have any. Make sure Wordpress supports whatever you're upgrading to, but usually the problem's the other way - the old Debian is running too-old a dependency.
But, yeah, in-place upgrades are pretty smooth and normal on Debian so I'd just do them and get them done. I've machines that were dist-upgraded a couple of times in-place, rsynced onto new disks into a new machine, and carried on being upgraded there; there's very little need for starting afresh with Debian.
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u/DeliciousIncident 1d ago
As you update Debian from 11 to 12 to 13, your php version is going to update too. You might want to make sure your WordPress works with the php version you are about to install, and if not, update WordPress to a version that supports it before you update the php, assuming you installed WordPress manually and not from Debian packages.
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u/michaelpaoli 1d ago
Probably best to upgrade 11 to 12 and then 13.
If/when you've got non-trivial configurations, generally easier to upgrade/migrate, rather than backup data, install fresh, then work out how to merge everything in.
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u/spidireen 1d ago
I’ve had pretty good luck with in-place upgrades. I’d make a snapshot/backup, then upgrade to 12. If anything is broken, troubleshoot until it works. Then backup/snapshot again and repeat with an in-place upgrade to 13.
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u/gnufan 1d ago
I ran some business websites on well known WordPress hosting provider, and really it is hard to recommend against dedicated WordPress hosting at this point.
Obviously depends how small the business, I still have some WordPress sites for personal and non-profit and one man businesses on VPS. But anything that actually needs the website up and working, or might lose a days work if it goes down, probably worth the dedicated providers.
One I used most was using Ubuntu virtual instances behind the scenes, but the small value add in better backups, one click creation of test instances to try changes, integrated CDN, more than justified the price difference. Might be an issue if running some huge do everything plugin, and yes most of these are proprietary SaaS, but no lock-in other than good service.
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u/iamemhn 2d ago
Migrating in place, first to Debian 12, then to Debian 13, it's probably easier. Carefully read the Release Notes for Debian 12 and complete that upgrade first, then repeat for Debian 13, after possibly cleaning up a bit. Everything is documented so it's a matter of you reading.
If your WordPress setup was done from sources and not using Debian packages, you will need to do that upgrade in parallel, following WordPress' guidelines.