On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
2009/5/15 George Herbert
<george.herbert(a)gmail.com>om>:
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.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com