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Upgrade OpenVidu Elastic: DigitalOcean#

DigitalOcean

For DigitalOcean environments, we recommend upgrading by redeploying the OpenVidu Elastic DigitalOcean stack using the latest version. This approach ensures that all components are updated accurately and consistently, since DigitalOcean Terraform files and related configurations may differ between releases. Redeploying guarantees that all necessary changes are properly applied.

If you would prefer not to redeploy, an in-place upgrade is also possible. The steps below describe how to perform an in-place upgrade of your OpenVidu Elastic deployment on DigitalOcean.

Upgrading OpenVidu Elastic on DigitalOcean#

  1. SSH into your Master Node.

  2. Execute the following command in the Master Node:

    sh <(curl -fsSL http://get.openvidu.io/update/latest/update.sh)

    To upgrade to a specific version instead, replace latest with the version number (e.g. 3.7.0).

  3. This will run an update script that guides you from your currently installed version to the target one. The output will begin with the following:

    Stopping OpenVidu service...
Backing up files...

    - Backing up file '/opt/openvidu/config' to '/opt/openvidu/backups/<DATE>_<VERSION>/config'
    ... More files ...

--------------------
📦 Backup directory: /opt/openvidu/backups/<DATE>_<VERSION>/
--------------------

--------------------
🚀 Updating OpenVidu from 3.x.x to 3.y.y
--------------------

? Do you want to update from 3.x.x to 3.y.y? ›
• Yes
  No

  4. Confirm each version upgrade. You can jump straight to the latest release regardless of how far behind you are — the updater will automatically apply every intermediate upgrade in sequence.

    For each intermediate version, the updater will prompt you to confirm the upgrade, display a diff of configuration file changes, ask whether to apply the diff, and ask whether to pull updated Docker images. You must confirm each step.

    Warning

    The updater will flag any breaking changes if they are present. Pay close attention to these, as they may require you to update firewall rules, open or close specific ports, or make other manual configuration changes.

    Pulling Docker images

    When upgrading across multiple intermediate versions, answer No when the updater asks whether to pull images at each intermediate step. Only answer Yes for the final version.

    Any missing images will be pulled automatically when you run systemctl start openvidu.

  5. After the final intermediate upgrade completes, you need to terminate the Media Nodes to apply the changes. Go to the DigitalOcean web console, navigate to the Droplets tab, select your Media Node instances, and terminate them. The DigitalOcean Function will provision new Media Nodes automatically, or the Fixed Autoscale Pool will do so if you have configured fixed Media Nodes.

  6. Once the Media Nodes are up and running, restart OpenVidu Elastic by running the following command on the Master Node:

    systemctl start openvidu && journalctl -f -u openvidu

    The journalctl command will show you the logs of the OpenVidu services. You can stop the logs by pressing Ctrl + C.

Backups and Rollback#

Once the upgrade is complete, a backup of the previous version will be available in the /opt/openvidu/backups directory. The backup contains only the configuration files that were changed during the upgrade.

To roll back to the previous version, copy the files from the backup back to the OpenVidu directory using the following command:

cp -r /opt/openvidu/backups/<DATE>_<VERSION>/* /opt/openvidu
/usr/local/bin/store_secret.sh save OPENVIDU_VERSION "<VERSION>"
/usr/local/bin/store_secret.sh fullsave

Where <DATE> and <VERSION> are the date and version of the backup you want to restore. For example:

cp -r /opt/openvidu/backups/2025-02-12-09-50-46_3.0.0/* /opt/openvidu
/usr/local/bin/store_secret.sh save OPENVIDU_VERSION "3.0.0"
/usr/local/bin/store_secret.sh fullsave

Note the store_secret.sh command at the end. This is required to update the OPENVIDU_VERSION secret in the DigitalOcean secret.env file, which the DigitalOcean deployment uses to determine which version of OpenVidu should be running on the Media Nodes. This only needs to be run on the Master Node.

Remember to terminate the Media Nodes after rolling back so that the Autoscale Pool can launch new Media Nodes with the restored configuration. You can do this from the DigitalOcean web console by navigating to the Droplets tab, selecting the Media Node instances, and terminating them.

Recommendations#

  • Always upgrade all nodes in your OpenVidu Elastic deployment. Running mismatched versions across nodes may cause compatibility issues.
  • If you encounter any problems during an upgrade, a full redeployment is always the recommended path to a clean installation.
  • Keep your Docker and Docker Compose versions up to date.

  • Remove unused images and containers to free up disk space. For example, once the upgrade is complete and OpenVidu is running, you can remove old images with the following command:

    docker image prune -a

    This command will remove all the images that are not being used by any container.