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Updating the Enterprise Infrastructure

Occasionally, it is necessary to update your Enterprise infrastructure components to improve performance, reliability, and security. This guide explains how to apply these updates using CloudFormation templates. Most application updates can be applied directly and do not require infrastructure changes. See Deployment and Updates for more information about those.

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Required Policy/Permissions

A single administrator requires permissions granted by the IAMFullPolicy policy. It is required to update the Role stack. Alternatively, work may be split between two people, a security and devops persona. After the security persona has updated the Role stack, the devops persona can update the instance stack if they have the iam:PassRole permission.

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Enterprise Infrastructure Update Process

  1. Enable Maintenance Mode to prevent data loss
  2. The existing Gitpod CloudFormation stacks are updated via automatically generated changesets. Your Gitpod Account Manager will share these in the form of deeplinks to these changesets that then need to be executed (i.e. accepted) by the user. Note that you may receive either one or two deeplinks depending on the updates required.
  3. If you receive two deeplinks for two separate CloudFormation updates, apply them in this order:
    • First, update the stack for the infrastructure creation role (gitpod-role). Follow the instructions from step 4 below.
    • Then, update the stack for the Gitpod Infrastructure (gitpod-instance). Follow the instructions from step 4 below.
  4. Executing the changeset by doing the following:
    • Open the deeplink provided (note the order of execution highlighted above). If desired, validate the changes to be made.
    • Press Execute changeset in the top left corner of the UI:

      Executing the changeset

    • Confirm the execution as follows:

      Confirm execution

    • Wait for the execution to finish. Depending on the update, this can take a while. See the Infrastructure Update Changelog for guidance.
Consult the Infrastructure Update Changelog or your Gitpod Account Manager to determine which stacks need updates and the impact of the update in terms of downtime. If you require the raw CloudFormation template to update your instance, please consult your Gitpod Account Manager. Ensure you always apply the CloudFormation updates in the right order (role first!).
  1. Disable Maintenance Mode to allow workspace starts again