Leaving a server on all day

[Bart Silverstrim]

On Jun 8, 2004, at 8:21 AM, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:

>
> I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a 
> thin
> client laptop.  Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot 
> of
> power?

Not necessarily.  If you want to measure it, make sure you have a 
decent UPS (which I'd recommend for ANY desktop setup) and most UPSs 
now have a monitoring utility or tool available (or load meter on the 
front) that will give you an idea how much power is being used.

The most I'd do is turn off the monitor...that probably uses most 
energy if it's not an LCD.

You can get figures from the power supply of the wattage and figure out 
what the MOST energy use would be for your area's rate with your last 
electric bill.  It would all depend on how many drives/fans/etc. you 
have running all the time, but overall I wouldn't think that one 
computer is that big of a drain.

> Is it true that the heat buildup in a home system (rather than a 
> heavily
> fanned commercial system) will kill the drives faster and this is a 
> good
> reason to turn it off during the day when I am not home?


As long as it has all it's cooling fans working and the room doesn't 
get too hot, it should be okay.  If you're worried you can add more 
cooling fans.  I keep a small air conditioner in the room (it's a small 
room where my systems are) running for summer days.

Will it "kill" the drives faster?  Well, *using* it will shorten it's 
lifespan.  It all depends on how valuable the data is...make backups of 
important data, or for me, I keep a RAID system set up (not that it's a 
backup...I'm protecting against drive failure as a loss of data).  Or 
get another computer and configure a RAIC...redundant array of 
inexpensive computers :-)  save data to multiple systems periodically.

All depends on your setup and how important your data is.  Personally I 
have a Win9x system at home that's been abused since college (old PII 
350 with a TV card) and a Linux desktop from Pogo that I use as a 
server, with IDE Raid in it...but it's just a modified desktop system.  
Works like a champ so far, both are running 24/7 with the Windows 
machine getting rebooted once every other day or so.

UNIX systems prefer not getting rebooted...they do Cron chores at night 
for housekeeping, and UNIX was made with being run constantly in mind.  
I'd advise NOT shutting down Unix systems unless there's a particular 
reason to do so, and configure your network/computers to try to keep 
data loss from failure of a component as a minimal worry; backups and 
software RAID may be good options.  but that's just me.