On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/5/15 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com:
Domas, I assume you're still on this list - can you give us some
background
why we're not on a closer to current release MySQL within the WMF environments?
Upgrading for the sake of upgrading is always a bad idea. The question should also be "why should we upgrade?" not "why shouldn't we upgrade?".
Eventually, supportability and bugfixes for newer versions surpass those for older versions.
I am not one for making changes just because, but having done long term system architecture and administration in industry, refreshing things every year or two years (be they Solaris, Linux, Oracle, or other tools) is a really good practice.
Among other things, if you wait too long between refreshes, you run the risk that it's too hard to roll the next upgrade, because of lack of experience and preparation with upgrading.
Upgrades should be regular and expected. Frequent is probably a mistake, barring active bugs, but trying to freeze anything in time works poorly over 5 year timespans. You eventually end up with hardware that's obsolete to the point of unreliability, software that's obsolete to the point of unreliability, etc.