‹ Back

PHP 8.0 updates and Debian 10 upgrades on servers fi1-4

2022-03-29

PHP 8.0 update will be executed on our servers from April 4 to 8, 2022 - as well as Debian 10 operating system upgrades will affect our customer in servers fi1 to fi4 during spring and early summer of May 3 to June 21, 2022.

 

PHP 8.0 update

The PHP 7.3 used on our servers will reach the end of its lifetime during this year, and as e result we will update to PHP 8.0. The transition will take place for all of our customers between Monday - Friday 4-8 April, 2022.

 

The latest versions of WordPress should work seamlessy with the new PHP 8.0, but we still would kindly ask our customers to make sure that the plugins and themes in your WordPress installation are up to date and compatible with PHP 8.0. This would minimize the possible incompatibilities after the upgrades.

 

If your website has been created by a seperate designer, please consult him/her to make sure that PHP 8.0 requirements are met: https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration80.php

 

If you have installed your WordPress trough the WordPress Toolkit or via Plesk application manager, you should update your WordPress core, plugins, and themes to the latest as soon as possible. Before executing any upgrades, we recommend to take full backups from your WordPress installation from the Plesk panel.

 

With WordPress Toolkit, you can also take backup from your spesific WordPress installation during the update.

 

After PHP 8.0 update any PHP based applications will run faster and this makes your website even snappier. But in case any incompatibilities emerge, we are able to revert back to PHP 7.4 per customer by request.

 

Debian 10 operating system upgrades

In addition to PHP updates, we need to upgrade some of our oldest servers' operating systems as well, because they have outdated Debian 9 OS, that will soon meet its end of life. We will run operating system upgrades to Debian 10 for servers fi1-4 in May-June 2022 according to the following schedule:

 

Tue-Wed night between 3rd and 4th May on the server fi1.hostaan.fi

Tue-Wed night between 10th and 11th May on the server fi2.hostaan.fi

Tue-Wed night between 17th and 18th May on the server fi3.hostaan.fi

Tue-Wed night between 24th and 25th May on the server fi4.hostaan.fi

Tue-Wed night between 31th May and 1th June (on reserve)

Tue-Wed night between 7th and 8th June on the server com0.hostaan.com

Tue-Wed night between 14th and 15th June on the server fi0.hostaan.fi

Tue-Wed night between 21th and 22th June (on reserve)

 

Each of the server will be upgraded to Debian 10 and this will cause downtime up to 2-3 hours inside nightly maintenance window 11 pm and 7 am. During the upgrade websites can be down and emails may not be available. Plesk control panel and webmail will also be under maintenance. There may be delays in the email delivery, and incoming emails during this time may be delayed by a few hours.

 

MariaDB database server will also be upgraded from 10.1 to 10.3 during this upgrade.

 

There may also be shifts in these schedules, and some servers may need to be upgrader on the other occasions (mentioned "on reserve" in the time table).

 

These upgrades concern only our customers residing on servers fi1-4, but the update between 14th and 15th June will affect all of our customers, as during the upgrade of server fi0.hostaan.fi our own website will be under maintenance and it is not possible to log into Plesk or webmail trough our website interface. In this case customers are still able to use direct addresses of each server (i.e. for Plesk and webmail interfaces).

 

These upgrades are necessary, because Debian 9 OS security support will cease on June 30, 2022. By upgrading to Debian 10 we will ensure the security patches for the servers are downloaded and applied also after that date. Debian 10 is already in use in most of our servers.

 

This kind of operating system upgrades will need to be made on our servers on average once every two years.

 

We kindly ask for your patience during and after the upgrades. You may experience brief outages and compatibility issues in the days that follow, but we will work to resolve these issues promptly. There may be exceptions in our phone support the day after the upgrades.

 

This Debian 10 upgrade will not require special attention from our customers, but of course, it is a good idea to avoid any own projects, ad campaigns and such activities during the upgrade.

 

We appreciate your patience in advance, and we'll be happy to help if you have any questions about these updates.