Comparing UAT to Production

When planning for a project, the planning, architecting and design is often focussed on the production environment. This is even more so when budget is an issue.

However, most people forget the fundamental truth. That is, in a software project, SHIT ALWAYS HAPPENS. What that means is, be prepared for the worse. 

If you are planning a HA in production,  make sure that you have HA in your UAT. If you have a Load Balancer in production, make sure you have one in UAT. Consider the following problems that can occur if you DID NOT have a similar environment.

1. Deployment -- Deploying to a cluster is different from deploying to a single machine

2. Infra Issues -- You can't simulate a cluster swing on a single machine

3. Data -- If you can't simulate real data, you're bound to have issues when you go to production. 

Now I know many of the SMEs OR budget concious companies will make a lot of noise about this. So it is a question of RISK. Are you willing to live with the operational issues that come with it OR are you risk adverse?