I’m planning to update and migration of Gitlab to the new version.
Currently, we are on Gitlab 9.4.7., and we want to update to the last available version, 12.7.0. What is the best approach to do this?
Is it possible to install GL 12.7.0 on new server and then backup everything on the old server and restore on the new one?
Or a better choice is to install same version on another server and have 2 servers on same version (9.4.7). Then, backup old instance of GL and restore it on new server. Then gradualy update new instance of GL (update to last release of version 9 → first release of version 10 → last release of version 10-> … → last available release).
Thanks a lot, I would appreciate any suggestions/advice?
You can only restore a backup on the same version of GitLab as it was made on.
Upgrading from 9.4.7 to 12.7.0 will take some time, but as your new server is probably faster than the old one, doing what you propose (i.e. start the new server on the old version) is probably going to be the faster, but you could also upgrade the old server first and do the backup+restore on 12.7.0.
It should work going from the latest 9.x to the latest 10.y, no need to go via 10.0.0, but I would probably go via the latest of each minor series, i.e. 9.4.7 -> 9.5.10 -> 10.0.7 -> … -> 11.11.8 -> 12.0.12 -> last 12.1 -> … ). Yes, it will take longer, but might also be a little safer, and you’ll spend a lot of time on this process anyway.