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The short answer: don't upgrade the old server in place. Build a new one alongside it, copy everything across, match the settings, test every site on the new one, then switch over in a minute or two and keep the old server ready to switch back. Done that way, customers don't notice.
Like PHP, every server operating system gets security updates for a set time, then stops. These are the ones we still find running business sites:
| Operating system | Standard updates ended |
|---|---|
| CentOS 7 | June 2024 |
| Ubuntu 16.04 | April 2021 |
| Ubuntu 18.04 | May 2023 |
| Ubuntu 20.04 | May 2025 |
Ubuntu sells extended security updates for older releases through Ubuntu Pro, which buys time. CentOS 7 has nothing comparable.
An old operating system usually means old PHP and an old database too, because they come as a set. So moving the server is often the moment to upgrade the PHP as well.
Database settings. A newer database can be stricter about dates, text encoding and capital letters in table names. Match the old settings first, tighten them later.
Scheduled jobs. If both servers run the nightly invoice run, customers get two invoices. Turn them on in one place only.
Email. Sites that send mail from the server itself need the new server set up to send it properly, or the emails land in spam.
The restart. One server we moved reported itself patched and wasn't: its web server had only reloaded, so it kept running the old PHP in memory. A full restart sorted it.
If you can move the server's address instead of waiting for DNS, the switch takes a minute and the way back takes another.
That's how we moved a whole estate onto supported servers in one night when a critical PHP flaw left no other option. The full story is here. If yours needs moving, a System Review tells you what's on it and what it would take, at a fixed price.
Which server or host, roughly what runs on it, and whether you know its operating system. If you don't, that's fine: finding out is step one.
What we will cover:
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