Cost of IPv6 for IT operations team

[S.P.Zeidler]

Thus wrote Andy Davidson (andy at nosignal.org):

> Stage one - write v6 support requirements into RFP for equipment before you plan to turn it on.  Ideally this will be based on document RIPE-554 and be part of your buying process already (and have been in this process for at least the last buying cycle!)  This way, when you want to turn v6 support on, the incremental cost of your hardware support is zero.
> 
> Stage two - training, get a tunnel into the lab, make comfort with v6 part of your technical appraisal for the technology teams, so that when it’s time to turn it on your team are familiar and will make fewer mistakes.
> 
> Stage three - roll it out at your network edge, core & dns.  Yes this is a project which needs time management and planning and incurs cost.
> 
> Stage four - utilise your new training and v6 capable edge to roll out NEW services dual-stack.  The incremental cost of adding v6 support to a NEW rollout when you have to do a bunch of work to roll out a service at all is therefore zero.  v6 support for existing services can be added in product refreshes in time.

No "identify gaps of core custom-written software asuming that servers
have exactly one IP address, and it matches \d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+ (or language
equivalents), and fix them", at all? "We have IPv6 in the network, but we
don't use it for anything (except Web surfing)" does seem not particularily
useful. Might as well just deploy v6 to the DMZ and save yourself
a lot of hassle if that is all you'll do.

Or were you just ignoring software as Someone Elses Problem (tm)? :)

regards,
	spz

(currently doing devops for a manufactorer with ~5000 Unix servers running
the plants as a dayjob)
-- 
spz at serpens.de (S.P.Zeidler)