What Can System Administrators Learn from Programmers?
The LinuxPlanet - Interview - What Can System Administrators Learn from Programmers? - The Role of Open Source
tels us what we already know for a decade. We have to move forward to build infrastructures that can survive the 10th floor test.
Moving this process to the field of system administration, I would expect that a test system is rebuilt nightly unattended from scratch using the operating system distribution files, appropriate scripts, and add-on packages. All needed elements would be stored on local file servers under a configuration management system like CVS. Such a practice obviates the all too common danger of having a running system depending on a tool that was once fetched over the net from a site that has ceased to exist.
I think comparing it to nightly builds is a good thing.. afteral on our development platforms we are aiming for nightly redeployments :)