Re: Experience is a harsh teacher
"'quiet period', Christmas, end of life date on previous product"
Situation: current H/W due to be EoL (at least for support purposes) at end of 31 Dec.
The quiet period between Christmas & New Year would have been the ideal time to migrate over to new H/W. Minimal risk, just unload the data and reload it onto a version of the same engine on current H/W*. Client's manglement absolutely forbade it even when warned that any H/W failure would cost an arm and a leg and possibly CEO's first-born.. It turned out that they'd arranged for bean-counters to come in to value the company for a sale.
* When it eventually was moved it went just as smoothly as anticipated.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
