SAs will find that their hands are tied by change-management red tape and
they are unable to work effectively.
If a site can readily identify one or two machines that are absolutely
critical to the running of the business, those machines should be covered by
stringent change-management processes. For example, the main database machines
and credit card processing machines at an e-commerce site could fall
into this category. At a drug-development company, machines involved in that
process often are required by law to comply to very strict change-management
controls. Machines in this category usually are not servers that provide such
important services as email, printing, DNS, or authentication. Machines that
provide those services should be covered by less stringent change-management
policies to strike a balance between the benefits of change management
and the benefits of SAs’ being able to quickly respond to customers’ needs.
However, significant changes to these servers or services do need to follow
good change-management process so that they happen smoothly, with few
surprises.
Later chapters cover in detail the processes associated with various types
of changes. In particular, Chapter 18 covers server upgrades, Chapter 19
covers service conversions, and Chapter 20 covers maintenance windows.