> Eventually you get burned. For me, it was a routine should-have-been-minor web server update where one of the packages I relied on suddenly became unsupported

> Eventually you get burned. For me, it was a routine should-have-been-minor web server update where one of the packages I relied on suddenly became unsupported and every single hosted site stopped working. I'm not wishing to be inflammatory here, but surely you could have exactly the same problem with something that is updated 'slowly'. If you're relying on the software you get being 100% correct/bug free every time you get it, you're building your house on sand. This is where having testing (ideally a good set of automated testing) is invaluable. Having a robust set of tests you run before you roll out changes to 'production' is important if your 'production' is "we can't afford for this to go down." Along testing, you need to have a backout strategy. What do you do if it all goes wrong? This is usually very similar to your backup/restore strategy as the problem is generally the same: If your server gets hosed/breaks/fails, what do you do?