The other big one that usually requires downtime is network. You may not be touching your game servers all that often but if you need to do a major OS upgrade on a load balancer or switch, that’s going to mean everything behind it loses connectivity - and unless you’re talking one of the big hitters like WoW, they’re probably not funding redundant dual network paths to allow you to take it down without downtime
If you are running metal, and the health of your entire network relies on a single load balancer or a single network switch, you’re far from being production-ready from a redundancy and scaling perspective.
The other big one that usually requires downtime is network. You may not be touching your game servers all that often but if you need to do a major OS upgrade on a load balancer or switch, that’s going to mean everything behind it loses connectivity - and unless you’re talking one of the big hitters like WoW, they’re probably not funding redundant dual network paths to allow you to take it down without downtime
If you are running metal, and the health of your entire network relies on a single load balancer or a single network switch, you’re far from being production-ready from a redundancy and scaling perspective.