[j-nsp] MX480

[Saku Ytti]

Hey,

>  Wait for a golden release, ask JTAC about the next golden release coming
> out.  Maybe 17.3R2 or R3.  They will be highly tested and classified as
> very safe for production use immediately.

I usually mature my images on SCSI spindles on VAX machines for at
least two year to really bring out the stableness.

Real talk, Juniper has done significant work on rebasing the JunOS on
single branch with compelling testing story, I believe their story, I
believe newer JunOS are better. And generally stability is very
situational, release having 1 bug affecting you greatly is far worse
image to you, than image having 1M bugs not affecting you.
I exercise similar methodology for all vendors

a) start with latest long term supported image
b) test to see it's not obviously broken, if it is obviously broken,
contact vendor for assistance
c) if not obviously broken, deploy
d) when you need new features, restart the process, when you need bug
fixes install rebuild

Long term:

a) ask vendor to report you quarterly in which phase of development
they found bugs and how much
b) use that information to choose vendors who are getting better
according the metrics, i.e. finding issues earlier in the process

We need to make good testing story economic necessity. I know some
vendor testing initiatives have been shot down, when there has not
been any external pressure to invest on the work. So we can achieve
lot of good, if we are asking vendors to report the right things to
us.
I think in last two years all vendors are getting lot better in this.
If I had to guess, I don't think it's the networking folk we get to
thank here, I think it's the software focused shops who are asking for
the right data from vendors. We should join them.

-- 
  ++ytti