rlee@digigw.lab.nanko.digital.co.jp (Robert Lee) (05/29/90)
Thanks to everyone who responded to my original posting on powering machines off and on everyday. The responses were the type I was looking for and helps me out alot. Here is a short summary: - with 1 exception, all the respondents left their SS1s and servers running 24hrs/day. - the one person who turned off the machines each day, has had NO problems. - effectively, almost everyone said that it is better to keep the equipment at a constant temperature. Here is an excerpt from lehners@uniol: > The technical reason are also clear to me: the electrical, mechanical > und temperature stress is really bad when switching on and off all the > days. The peak currents at power on are real high (aprox. 5 times the > current in normal mode). Also the temperature stress and the resulting > mechanical stress is bad for the machines. Hard disk drives are really > in stress when accellerating to the operating speed. - in addition, bob@kahala.soest.hawaii.edu said: > ... Machines that are turned off and > on every day definitely suffer hardware problems more often. > This is particularly noticeably where humidity is high > (leaving machines off at night can cause small amounts > of moisture to condense, which leads to corrosion of > contacts). - pallen@atc.boeing.com made a good point which is worth mentioning: > Suns are designed for continuous operation. We have all our machines on > Sun maintenance and run them 24 hours a day. The only moving part that > seems to wear out is cooling fans. They last a year or two and then either > stop turning or start making noise. Fans should be checked periodically. > The other things that go wrong, like monitors and disks, would probably > have more problems if the machines were power-cycled daily. But then I > don't have any hard data to back up that opinion. - and finally thanks to p.mellor@uk.ac.city for his informative readnews article. I will go looking in the archive for old Sunspots issues. Robert Internet: rlee@digital.co.jp