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Proposal: Remove all single-node zero downtime instructions

What does this MR do?

With only Puma carried in GitLab 14.0 onwards there is no possibility of minimizing any downtime in single-node upgrades.

When the migration is run while leaving the previous version's puma running, the database changes are picked up in Rails dynamically and UI errors begin to be thrown to users.

Given the disruption of features is essentially the same to users as a downtime when it affects critical features such as merge requests the section is false in indicating that downtime is minimized.

Additionally this section is often discovered by users and blindly followed even for multiple version jumps that leads to broken upgrades.

This change removes all sections related to zero downtime upgrade instructions of single nodes.

Related issues

This is a non-exhaustive list of recent customer support tickets, all stemming from customers discovering and following the single node zero-downtime instructions that are unnecessarily complex for their setup and error-prone with no visible benefits:

An observable theme in all these related tickets:

  • Administrators keep GitLab running for users and users experience functionality errors, generating more reports internally for the administrators to deal with
  • Support engineers evaluate the ticket from scratch since it isn't immediately clear if the upgraded version has introduced a new bug that they'll need to understand or discover reports of or if the upgrade instructions followed were at fault

Tangentially related to feature request #356636

Author's checklist

If you are a GitLab team member and only adding documentation, do not add any of the following labels:

  • ~"frontend"
  • ~"backend"
  • ~"type::bug"
  • ~"database"

These labels cause the MR to be added to code verification QA issues.

Reviewer's checklist

Documentation-related MRs should be reviewed by a Technical Writer for a non-blocking review, based on Documentation Guidelines and the Style Guide.

  • If the content requires it, ensure the information is reviewed by a subject matter expert.
  • Technical writer review items:
    • Ensure docs metadata is present and up-to-date.
    • Ensure the appropriate labels are added to this MR.
    • Ensure a release milestone is set.
    • If relevant to this MR, ensure content topic type principles are in use, including:
      • The headings should be something you'd do a Google search for. Instead of Default behavior, say something like Default behavior when you close an issue.
      • The headings (other than the page title) should be active. Instead of Configuring GDK, say something like Configure GDK.
      • Any task steps should be written as a numbered list.
      • If the content still needs to be edited for topic types, you can create a follow-up issue with the docs-technical-debt label.
  • Review by assigned maintainer, who can always request/require the reviews above. Maintainer's review can occur before or after a technical writer review.
Edited by Harsh Chouraria

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