The sort of program that once set up, just ticks along without fuss or bother forever.
For me, as I’m replacing the vms today which I set up five years ago and haven’t needed to touch since;
- HAProxy
- KeepaliveD
Not easy to learn, but once they’re running, they both go on forever.
OS update fuss level is hugely dependant on distro though.
EL and rebuilds? Full new machine and copy services over (or if paying RHEL, use their migrator which can have mixed results). Agree, huge fuss.
Debian/ubuntu? Dist-upgrade, normally safe and much quicker.
Plus a bunch of rolling release distros that just keep up to date (but will occasionally add breaking changes that you might not be ready for)
Can’t so easily get around hardware issues, so build cattle that can be easily redeployed or scaled. Doesn’t fit all situations though.