Quote Originally Posted by Kosmos992k View Post
Contrary to your contrarian view, if you change the hardware in a LIVE environment, you are risking breaking something in the software, which in turn threatens the service. The whole OS and application Stack on the server is configured for the specific platform. You can't just change hardware in the server on the fly. If something fails, it will be replaced by an identical unit. In a production setting where 24/7 operation is expected, you don't mess with the configuration.

Changes to server hardware are carefully planned in advance, maintenance is about restoring the system to operation, not stealth upgrades. OS patching is a more continual (and critical) process and with the risks of unpatched exploits on servers, it's routine now to upgrade the OS and patch applications as needed. But the underlying hardware won't change without a good deal of planning, which is why you start planning long before the server hits EoL, or goes out of maintenance.


We are talking about two different things, because I agree with your points, but nether of us know the setup, because there are plenty of real world environments that get hardware upgrades without the degree of concern that you suggest.

So you could be right with SE, but then again, there are all kinds of upgrades. Disk Speeds, Network Cards, Processors, that can all get upgraded, and then you have who new servers that can also be tested and put into production. I see this all the time.

Now, when it comes to the database servers... Oh man, yes, that's where you want to be very, very careful, and take your sweet time, and maybe that's where we'd see a huge improvement overall from the server configuration.

My point is, nether of us know how SE has it configured, and how they plan to upgrade those servers, etc... Unless you work for them, that is.