Yarkon Server - Upgrade AMI

If you deployed Yarkon Server using an AMI (ie, from an AWS Marketplace listing), and a new version becomes available, you'd want to upgrade your running instance to ensure you get all new features, security updates and bug fixes.

To upgrade with no interruption to your end users, follow these steps:

  1. Using your current instance, take a database backup. You do it from the Admin Console, Administration page, Database tab.
  2. Start the new instance from the AWS Marketplace as you did before. You can use this opportunity to change your subscription tier.
  3. Once it is up, finish the setup, and make sure to use the same admin user and password as in the current one (this makes everything easier).
  4. Then, from the new instance, go to the Database tab and import from the backup.
  5. Verify that all looks correct and the new server is operational.
  6. Once satisfied, change your DNS settings (meaning, where you set the URL for the server that users are using, usually in Route 53) from the old server to the new one and again verify all works.
  7. You can now decommission the old server (turn it off, that would also stop all charges). If you want to play it safe, you can hold it up until you are sure, so a couple of days or so. If it was set up using the CloudFormation template, simply delete the stack.

A new Yarkon deployment using the CloudFormation template will re-create all the required IAM entities (eg, role, security group). They are all named based on the name of the stack. If you made any changes to your previous deployment, you can either make the same changes again (copy pasting is fine), or change the IAM entities used by the new stack to use the current one (it is essentially the machine role). If you do use the current one, make sure to not delete them when you remove the stack.