Although you can perform zero-downtime updates with a single GitLab node, the recommendation is to separate GitLab into several application nodes.
Single GitLab nodes can be updated with only a [few minutes of downtime](https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/update/README.html#single-node-deployment).
To avoid this, we recommend to separate GitLab into several application nodes.
As long as at least one of each component is online and capable of handling the instance's usage load, your team's productivity will not be interrupted during the update.