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Windows of Change

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Article from ADMIN 33/2016

By ADMIN Magazine

By a virtual show of hands, how many of you open change records for changes that occur between the hours of 23:00 and 06:00? That's almost all of you. No, I didn't actually have to see you to know how many of you either raised your hands virtually or physically. Don't forget that I live this life of trips to the data center, change windows, change records, service requests, backout plans, and root cause analysis. I've lived it for a very long time – so long in fact, I find myself asking a good question: Why don't we perform changes when we're actually awake and when everyone who can help, if things inevitably go wrong, is awake, too?

Spoiler alert: I am under no delusion that I will change anyone's behavior by stating my observations and opinions here, but at least you'll have considered them as an alternative to the long-established behaviors.

After having already spent at least eight hours on the job, I often have to plan for a change that begins at or near midnight. For mission-critical business applications, databases, and storage, this doesn't appear to be the wisest decision. Wouldn't it make more sense to perform these changes during the day, when you have a fresh and awake staff to do the work? It makes sense to me, especially when data centers are built with redundancy in mind. Isn't that exactly what the purpose of redundancy is?

Supposedly, every system has a failover option – at least from A to B. Routers, switches, storage arrays, power supplies, services, databases, and applications all have redundancy that protects the business from failure should a system fail. Systems fail during the day, too, although it seems like they fail more often in the wee hours of the morning or over a long holiday weekend than they do during the day. We fix them during the day, too, don't we?

I once presented this case to a project manager and an account executive who couldn't argue with the logic, but the answer was still the same from both:

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