We run a small (5 server) computer telephony platform that has to run 24/7. Finding any maintenance window is a major problem - we have several hundred client services, all interacting with real-time databases and the risk of something failing to deploy is too horrid to contemplate.

There is no budget for a replicated test environment, so we have one platform that is dev/test/staging/production. Yeah, yeah, I know ...

So when we deployed a new co-lo platform a year or two back, we took the decision (rightly or wrongly) to get everything up to date prior to go-live and then freeze the build on all servers. The only thing I've done since has been a couple of critical patches on the blade enclosure and SAN controllers when we needed to shut the whole system down for two hours due to site power issues - and that exercise took three weeks to achieve due to all the client consultations and notifications that were needed.

Much clenching, I can tell you, when the SAN didn't restart first time !

So, I'm happy to be accused of ostrich-like behaviour, but I'd rather avoid patches, SPs and updates. If it ain't broke, etc. etc.