Homelab

Never! I have 2 mini pcs in separate locations running 24/7. One for downloading content, and running a DNS server/dynamic dns. The other for point-to-point VPN to access multiple NVRs that are blocked from the WAN itself. Luckily they both sip little power!

… shutting down?

Ideally I don't.

Mine chug along 24/7 only a restart for updates

Uhhhhh, never

Most things stay up 24/7

I have a couple machines I don't currently use for anything so they're powered off until needed.

shutdown? - never :D

Everything in my lab is up 24/7 unless my UPS shuts it down in a power outage, if I'm doing any work inside the chassis or if I'm updating something. If you can handle the power bill, no real harm keeping it online all day.

mine is small and idles at 17 watts, but i’ll shut it down if i don’t use for many days. also when i’m on vacation.

When the power goes out.

Fuck that. 3 years uptime and counting.

I shut my 4U desktop off at night to save energy unless it's running some overnight compute job. NAS goes into sleep mode but stays on. Switch, router, home assistant NUC stay on.

Shut down? Never, reboot when necessary.

You can turn host machines off? Who knew.

Seriously, mine only get switched off if hardware breaks or needs reconfiguring.

Uptime is a score I need to beat!

Today marks the first day in about 2 years that my hosts will be shut down on purpose. Running new electrical circuits for the rack.

Previous shutdowns have been like weather related power outages and such.

I don’t shut them down but I restart when I apply updates. Having a high uptime counter is not a badge of honor unless it’s a fancy HA system.

I suppose it depends what kind of hardware you're using. I have enterprise class servers that are meant to run 24/7 and they do. They'll be useless technologically before they wear out.

Hardware change or power outage

Do you virtualize/pool host to separate function from hardware? If yes, then go nuts shutting off hardware as needed for service.

Otherwise, the correct answers are “annually as part of a practical DR review”, “only when the electric company cuts you off for non-payment”, and “as often as needed to keep a spouse off your back”.

I have several ESXi hosts, which automatically turn off and on as needed by vCenter based on server loads.

Otherwise, I don’t turn anything else off.

I don't reboot servers in my homelab unless any update require me to do so. I do have a clustered Proxmox setup, so no downtime if the admin (aka me) doesn't screw up ;-)

The only valid reason (imho) to reboot unless any update requires it would be apps with memory leaks where a service restart doesn't fix the problem. Not often I face this problem these days, but earlier versions of Windows had the occasional habit...

Whenever they've been running from UPS battery for more than a few minutes or for hardware maintenance/repair, otherwise they run 24/7

Summer every day in the afternoon for heat and power usage (time of use bills triple from 3-9pm). Scripted to run on one host per site for must have apps.

Winter - once a month for the weekend after patch Tuesday. It’s a chance to check for cables being nibbled/cleaning/other things needing doing.

Network services 24/7 (4 rpi3) Nas shutdowns every day at 23:30 and boots at 9:00, except we that boots at 10:00. Apci schedule management is embedded in firmware (qnap).

Servers shutdown at 23:15 and boots at 9:15 (we 10:15). For these rtcwake does the job.

WoL is enabled in case of.

ppl shut down there hosts? Since when? XD

My stuff only shuts down when the power goes out longer than my battery can hold

I run ESXi on most of my systems. So that means, when there is an update of ESXi, I install the updates and reboot them.

Sometimes I need to change hardware or upgrade stuff. Then too.

I took my docker host offline yesterday, because of a RAM upgrade (16GB > 24GB, yeah, I'm aware I lost dual-channel). I regularly check for updates on non-ESXi machines.

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Some people love 100% uptime of their servers. I hate it. When somebody has high uptime, it means they are lazy and don't keep up with updates, which are critical most of the time.

I have been turning mine off more frequently now that my electric rates have jumped 30% in the last two months. I'm currently looking to dump the 11 year old server hardware for both my nas and hypervisor server and consolidate everything into a modern lower power single system. Most likely using Truenas Scale.

Right now I'm using a old battery back up connects to 6 deep cell battery's it only lasts a couple hours lmao

every kernel update, each host gets the boot. So uptime is rarely over a month.

I just recently done a hardware upgrade on a homelab machine that had been on running proxmox for 2years with no downtime.

I never had a reason to shut it off since it was running important vms. Fans all had filters do cleaning was done while machine was running. And because of dual PSUs. UPS battery changes were easy to do too without needing downtime

You shutdown servers? I guess when I clean out dust 🤷‍♂️

Let it run. Just power off idle drives and such.

My chassis has 7 blades in it, and I typically only keep 4 powered on. However, I patch them regularly, requiring reboots, but I don't have to take any VMs down with DRS.

My Proxmox VM host ran for well over a year and I had to shut it down to add more RAM when I finally bought it. A couple VMs on it ran for just as long. All Linux stuff. Windows guest have to reboot minimum every 90 days or things start getting weird, just a DC

If you need to reboot or shutdown regularly it's not a server.