never change a running system en · X
Etymology
From the field of computing, likely from German never change a running system.
Meanings
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Do not change something while it is working (because there is a risk of breaking it).
That is, applying a specialised new policy to only improve a temporary capacity extension may be unsuitable (“Never change a running system!”).
2007, Xing Zhou, Thomas Dreibholz, Erwin P. Rathgeb, “Improving the Load Balancing Performance of Reliable Server Pooling in Heterogeneous Capacity Environments”, in Serge Fdida, Kazunori Sugiura, editors, Sustainable Internet: Third Asian Internet Engineering Conference, AINTEC 2007 […], →ISBN, page 126:This is the weakest point of the current practice: the deployment of complex systems on a heterogeneous, distributed platform is typically a nightmare, the required system-level testing is virtually unsupported, and maintenance and upgrading very often turn out to be extremely time consuming and expensive, de facto responsible for the slogan “never change a running system”.
2012, Tiziana Margaria, Bernhard Steffen, “Service-Orientation: Conquering Complexity with XMDD”, in Mike Hinchey, Lorcan Coyle, editors, Conquering Complexity, →ISBN, page 224:It’s not a coincidence that the following saying offers insight into the CIOs’ minds: ‘Never change a running system.’ However, just keeping the lights on seems to prevent innovation.
2021, Andreas Graesser, Escape the Change Dilemma: Transformation to a Smart Data-Driven World, →ISBN:“Never change a running system” is a widely used statement in software development, and it is also applicable when you consider moving your application to the cloud.
2019, Boris Scholl, Trent Swanson, Peter Jausovec, Cloud Native: Using Containers, Functions, and Data to Build Next-Generation Applications, →ISBN: