I agree wholeheartly with many things you said here. Change isn't always a good thing. I strongly recommend using a test server to see what breaks when you upgrade anything before you just deploy it all over, *ESPECIALLY* if you are highly dependant on it.

In my personal experience as a system administrator, unless mandated by the need for a feature, repair of a bug or a security update, an upgrade is an unneccesary act and often times a very dangerous one. When I was new to system administration, I thought that it was important to stay "within two releases" etc as is mentioned in the initial post. I quickly realized (after a horrible problem surfaced) that my logic may have been a bit flawed. I adopted a new philosophy...upgrade when there is some need to do so, otherwise, leave it alone.

dragonchild is right about changing too many things at once as well. If something does break (and trust me...it WILL), it will be far more difficult to find and correct the problem if you changed multiple things. If you *must* upgrade many things, do it in reasonable phases where you can simplify any troubleshooting. You will thank yourself later.

Just my $0.02.

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