Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 Server

[Anteaus]

I'm having trouble finding information on Ubuntu 14.04 specific to server use. Everything I've read so far comparing 12.04 and 14.04 deal mainly with the desktop.

Does anyone know if there are any advances under the hood that make it worthwhile to go from 12.04 to 14.04 purely for server use? Right now I'm running 12.04 server headless, so I'm not interested in updates to the GUI. I'm mostly concerned with overall performance and stability.

Thanks in advance.

 

[lxskllr]

New kernel. Also, any packages you use will be updated. That's how I'd attack the "is it worth question" Lookup your major packages, and see if anything new looks interesting. If it works, it works though. I wouldn't expect any great improvements on an running server.

 

[smakme7757]

New kernel. Also, any packages you use will be updated. That's how I'd attack the "is it worth question" Lookup your major packages, and see if anything new looks interesting. If it works, it works though. I wouldn't expect any great improvements on an running server.

Pretty much this.

For servers you really want to be looking at stability, security and functionality. If all of those are met with your current version then there isn't much point updating.

Once I've got a server up and running I like to leave it alone except for security or stability problems - Just upgrading within the same version of the OS is what I do.

The major difference between the desktop and the server version are the packages, so you could use the 12.04 to 14.04 desktop upgrade as a gauge of how well a server upgrade would go, minus the UI.

However staying on the latest release isn't a bad idea if a little bit a downtime doesn't bother you, in case something goes wrong.

 

[Anteaus]

Thanks. It's a home server so it's not a problem to take it down for a few hours. I'm going to make the upgrade if for no other reason than maybe better hardware support with the newer kernel.

 

[fyb3r]

This is one of many reasons why I run my servers in a virtualized environment. I can have the server up and running whilst I have a second virtual of the same server upgrading to a new version and I can test the stability of it without ever having to worry about breaking something and the down time in between installs.

 

[Anteaus]

This is one of many reasons why I run my servers in a virtualized environment. I can have the server up and running whilst I have a second virtual of the same server upgrading to a new version and I can test the stability of it without ever having to worry about breaking something and the down time in between installs.

That seams unnecessarily complex for my situation. I only have the single file server. If I virtualize, wouldn't that mean I would need to also maintain the virtualization server in addition to juggling server images? In the case of Ubuntu 14.04, I'd end up having to install everything twice...once for the virtual machine and once for the actual server, assuming no problems.

Other than my system drive, my server is literally just 3 drives mounted individually with no raid. After a clean install, it takes all of 5 minutes to configure the network interface, edit FSTAB, and setup Samba from the command line.