> It is astounding how many people require 24/7 ops... while working 8/5.
In this case the client had an actually global audience. They could have afforded downtime for the actual transition, but it was a usual test for the high availability features that mattered for them.
I do agree with the overall principle, though - a whole lot of people think they need 24/7 and can't afford downtime, yet almost all of them are a lot less important than e.g. my bank, which do not hesitate to shut down their online banking for maintenance now and again. As it turns out, most people can afford downtime as long as it's planned and announced. Convincing management of that is a whole other issue.
> My take on this is what OP is a sysadmin, not a dev. smug smile
Hah. I'd say I was devops before devops was a thing. I started out writing code, but my first startup was an ISP where I was thrown head-first into learning networks (we couldn't afford to pay to have our upstream provider help set up our connection, so I learnt to configure cisco routers while having our provider on the phone and feigning troubleshooting with a lot of "so what do you have on your side?") and sysadmin stuff, and I've oscillated back and forth between operations and development ever since. Way too few developers have experienced the sysadmin side, and it's costing a lot of companies a lot of money to have devs that are increasingly oblivious to hardware and networks.
It is astounding how many people require 24/7 ops... while working 8/5.
Otherwise this comment is an exemplar on how things should be done. My take on this is what OP is a sysadmin, not a dev. *smug smile*