This is essentially what I do with my own server, but largely because I'm too dim to trust myself to upgrade things well. That being said, he's abstracting the

This is essentially what I do with my own server, but largely because I'm too dim to trust myself to upgrade things well. That being said, he's abstracting the problem a little bit: > If you absolutely know a system has been created via automation and never changed since the moment of creation, most of the problems I describe above disappear. Need to upgrade? No problem. Build a new, upgraded system and throw the old one away. New app revision? Same thing. Build a server (or image) with a new revision and throw away the old ones. The key here is created via automation. You get a choice, I think: * You can spend time/energy/worry/entropy on making sure the server is up to date * You can spend time/energy/worry/entropy on making sure the automated process is up to date The second one is a little easier, to be sure, though depending on the setup it could still involve a lot of research, and it's certainly more expensive. But hey, if you're in a position where trading some money to buy some time is an option and you have the cash to burn, I'd buy the time at every chance.