Re: OS Upgrades and Other Patches
Same experience here the last time I experienced any kind of issue with upgrades was on the transition from RHEL 6.0 to RHEL 6.1, in my case it was related to a blunder on LVM assuming certain defaults, you could work-around it easily and got fixed in 24h though.
This maybe shocking to Windows people, but usually upgrading a Linux server if you know what you are doing (this is if you're experienced) is completely painless and very, very quick.
The problems in Linux come with commercial software from 3rd parties, some which insist on using abnormally large amounts of shell scripts with lots and lots of assumptions (and no fail check whatsoever), seem to have odd libraries that have strange dependencies, and support personnel who think the Linux shell is a more complicated version of MS-DOS.
That is why some people keep running their RHEL 5.x boxes happily for years and years, it is for fear or screwing these applications.
One way in which people keep these stupid turds running is, they buy new hardware running RHEL 7.x, virtualise the old RHEL 5.x server, stick it in a VM and access it via proxy software running on the physical RHEL 7.x side.
If you think about it, is like a brute-force container. I have seen that done to work around applications that can't be upgraded and depend on old versions of OpenSSL. As the proxy is running on RHEL 7.x you offload the SSL to the RHEL 7.x side and voila, new cypher/protocol support on an old application.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
