I have a couple of dedicated servers running the latest ISPconfig but they are a bit old and I have not been updating the packages via "yum". I am wanting to update things for security, etc, but want to make sure I do so safely as these are production boxes. Can you give me any helpful hints on the best/safest way to do this? I was specifically wondering as I see "firmware" and "kernel" updates available but also just in general. I assume I'll need to reboot after kernel updates. Thanks in advance.
I do not use CentOS, but Debian and Ubuntu. On those servers with stable version apt upgrade works reliably, if problems appear they are caused by packages installed from outside debian/ubuntu, or non standard confiturations. I recommend reading documentation for CentOS upgrades. See how it is done and follow the instructions. I would expect things to work OK when just upgrading the 7.3 version packages. When moving to next release 7.4 then even more reading of the release notes on how to get to the new release is in order. If you are hesitant, get a practice CentOS host where you can try out the upgrades. You could even make image copy of the current installation, install it somewhere else (another host or create virtual machine) and test upgrading. If you want to run with the new kernel you have to reboot. If you really really do not want to upgrade that box, you could install a new host with CentOS 7.3, upgrade it to the latest packages, and then move over your datas to that new host. Then make it a regular job to weekly check what needs to be upgraded so you do not end up in this situation again. Also schedule service time weekly where you can reboot the host if needed. If you are using ISPConfig, which is strange since you did not post your question on ISPConfig forum, you could install a new ISPConfig host and use ISPConfig Migration Toolkit to move datas to the new host. https://www.ispconfig.org/add-ons/ispconfig-migration-tool/
