> The cumulative effect of these upgrades is to more than double our performance, and therefore our service capacity.
That's a risky conclusion, in that it's likely over-generalised.
The upgrades may have improved the average performance, but they might introduce some performance impact on less well trodden paths, things that may strike at the least convenient time. There are performance gotchas that show their faces when load increases (system cache inefficiencies, etc. etc.) Some of the times I've been most hurt, operationally, have come when what looks great in generalised circumstances turns out to have a nastier under-load behaviour.
That said, always watch out for upgrades and make patching/upgrading a priority task. If there is a CVE attached to an upgrade, you want to be deploying that as fast as humanly possible. That means making sure there are as few human-involved steps as possible in your build/test/deployment chain.
> The cumulative effect of these upgrades is to more than double our performance, and therefore our service capacity.
That's a risky conclusion, in that it's likely over-generalised.
The upgrades may have improved the average performance, but they might introduce some performance impact on less well trodden paths, things that may strike at the least convenient time. There are performance gotchas that show their faces when load increases (system cache inefficiencies, etc. etc.) Some of the times I've been most hurt, operationally, have come when what looks great in generalised circumstances turns out to have a nastier under-load behaviour.
That said, always watch out for upgrades and make patching/upgrading a priority task. If there is a CVE attached to an upgrade, you want to be deploying that as fast as humanly possible. That means making sure there are as few human-involved steps as possible in your build/test/deployment chain.