Disgruntled Goat's Ten Rules of System Installation

1. Perform a dry run.
2. Perform a dry run again and wonder why it works flawlessly. Remember your basic physical principles and hence that perfect execution is a blatant contravention of Murphy's first law.
3. If it's still working, give up. The problems that will surface during roll-out will prove to be insurmountable. The sentiment of too good to be true is extremely important here. Go home and boil your head.
4. If things messed up and you fixed them, this is a good sign. Having had a few bugs means the God of System Commissioning's wrath is being discharged in a controlled manner, as opposed to the description in rule three. Roll-out will still be painful, but it will eventually work.
5. If you're performing a simple upgrade, do not under any circumstances be tempted to try it out on live kit: If fate was a dog and it was asleep, you'd be slapping its nose. Something will go horribly, horribly wrong in the most annoying, critical and time consuming way possible. Refer to points 1, 2 and 3 repeatedly until they have permiated your consciousness at a cellular level.
6. Drink coffee. This is essential as it allows you to perform essential robustness testing in one of two ways: (A) you use the rings made by your coffee cup on the network diagram as points of failure. Any single failure shouldn't result in loss of service; and (B) you pour your coffee down the back of the S390's PSU and see how redundant it really is (and how well the Halon system works, too...)
7. Don't let some prissy little shit of a beancounter derail your vision. They'll only whinge when the system fails and causes lost revenue, so a LARTing in time saves nine (although it isn't as much fun).
8. Remember that ethernet isolation specs are a load of crap: manufacturers just make them up - kilovolts my arse... As such, double-check the earth bonding on the comms risers as some fuckwit of an electrician will have managed to transpose phase and ground in at least one power strip. The ensuing light show will be pretty but again may result in an untimely discharge of the Halon system. Rubber gloves and those volt-sensing pen thingies are your friends!
9. People not directly involved with the install will remain outside of the cordoned-off area at all times. This includes (but is certainly not limited to) your boss, his boss, anyone who thinks they are or should be a boss; the PR manager and the stream of press that want to take photos; Bob the Janitor, Bob the Janitor's nephew that's with him for "work experience" (and armed with jam sandwiches and orange juice) and that guy from the vision mixing gallery that thinks that because he can pull a T-bar handle he's a fully qualified video systems engineer. Tell him in no uncertain terms that he's an idiot and he should fuck off before he has an accident; and then ensure he understands the distinction between threats and promises.
10. Ensure you have a watertight warranty that disclaims you from any responsibility for the idiocy and general lack of clue posessed by the Great Unwashed that will end up using your system. Remember, there is a scale yet to be invented that can fully impress upon the reader the extent of sheer cluelessness of which the users of your shiny new system are capable.