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?
TIA.
Brian
Has the server shown any behavior to warrant needing continual
reboots? If so, fix the server. Figure out what processes/
applications are gunking up the works and find ways to make them run
better. If not, there's really no reason to continually reboot OS X
Server. My server reboots for software updates and that's pretty
much it.
Servers were made for 24x7 use. If its not giving you that, then you
need to re-evaluate the configuration of your server itself. :)
Michael
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Michael Dhaliwal, ACSA
www.district13computing.com
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do. - Think Different
