On 1/31/06, Brian Garrett <email@hidden> wrote:
> A colleague of mine and I are having a philosophical debate over
> rebooting OS X Servers running on the Apple Xserve (G4 and G5's)
> hardware. These Xserves host a series of home directories (around
> 75) and various other share points. There are some internal websites
> also hosted there, but nothing else these systems do (but they do a
> lot!)
>
> His argument is that it doesn't hurt to reboot the system each day to
> clear the cobwebs out of the system and to fix any processes that
> have gone awry. That way it also would expose any problems the
> system might have the previous day during the reboot (and
> consequently causing a problem when the folks who use it come in to
> use the system).
>
> My argument is that the OS is built as a server class system and is
> meant to be up and running 24X7 without reboots. And if there is a
> problem it's best to isolate the problem, kill the service and
> restart it. My compromise is to schedule quarterly (as an example
> for a time period) reboots where we can apply patches/updates etc.
> at a time that it won't effect the users (such as on a weekend).
>
> Who's right on this? Or if it's not a matter of who's right and
> who's wrong - any suggestions on what's the better method of practice?
Daily reboots are only needed if you're doing something asinine like
running a server on Windows 95. Even NT4 could go a week or two
before requiring a reboot, and a modern server OS like FreeBSD can go
years between reboots. If a server acquires "cobwebs" of a sort that
can't be cleared up with a can of compressed air, you should
re-consider your choice of software.
Rebooting a server means a period of five minutes or more during which
the server is absolutely unavailable, plus further disruption as any
person or computer depending on the server being rebooted has to
suspend what they're doing, and resume it once the server is back up.
Just imagine what rebooting a webserver would do to someone on dialup
who's just downloaded 95% of a CD image!
--
Mark Wagner
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