How we maintain 1000+ servers : from security updates to newer Debian releases.

Speakers: Jérémy Lecour & Gregory Colpart

Track: Sysadmin & DevOps

Type: Long talk (45 minutes)

Room: Grand amphi

Time: Jul 18 (Fri): 15:00

Duration: 0:40

As a hosting company, we manage more than 1000 Debian servers. Almost every week we install security updates on 1000 servers in less than 1 hour. Every couple of years, we also upgrade many servers to a newer version of Debian. All of this is done with the help of Ansible playbooks/roles and shell scripts to automate the parts that can be, and other manual steps. None of this is rocket science, but it’s a bag of tricks that can benefit to the casual sysadmin as much as bigger teams that have to deal with massive setups. We plan to reuse some of the content we have presented at MiniDebConf Toulouse 2024 and paint a broader picture of our way to deal with upgrades to newer stable releases.