Christmas Shutdown

[nawbus]

As from Wednesday there will be no one in the school for two weeks (except me on a couple of days ), it seems rather wasteful having both our servers and all the network switches etc. left turned on all the time. So I am intending to turn everything off!

All our e-mail is handled on a server at our other site, so this isn't a problem, I'm doing a full back up and everything will be turned back on before the rest of the staff and pupils are back.

 

Does anyone else do this? If you do, what, if any, problems have you encountered when turning everything back on?

 

Cheers

[Michael]

Servers are designed to be switched on and left on serving the network. I always leave our servers and switches switched on. At the end of the day you're entitled to a holiday like everyone else. Enjoy it

[free4440273]

i second that.

[alan-d]

We used to shut everything down over the hols, restarting was never a problem. This was mainly to reduce the possibility of fire (apparently!)

 

This year we are leaving everything running as we now have a portal for those keen individuals that want access to there work over the hols. Obviously the only thing that wont be running is the backup to tape.

[tarquel]

yeah - usually leave everything running..... 24/7/365 lol

 

Mainly down to the fact that I wont be getting to work before anyone else, in order to turn them all back on again hehe

 

I'll probably shutdown some areas though maybe - cud set a scheduled startup from the server ....um......need to remember how hehe

 

Cheers

Nath

[ChrisH]

Mainly down to the fact that I wont be getting to work before anyone else, in order to turn them all back on again hehe

 

I leave all mine on as well as I see no reason for turning them off but like Nath says alot of people get in about 45 minutes before I start so ......

[nawbus]

I think I will shut everything down over the hols.

 

@Michael although I realise that the servers, switches etc. are designed to be left on all the time, I can't see the point of leaving them all on when nothing is going to be used for nearly 2 weeks. Seems a huge waste of power!

[Dos_Box]

Remember, servers are like the elderly. If you put them to bed at night some may not wake up in the morning!!

[nawbus]

Remember, servers are like the elderly. If you put them to bed at night some may not wake up in the morning!!

 

Oooo, hopefully that kill off our RM Community 2.4 server then

[tarquel]

A plan with no drawbacks there hehe

 

except the work of setting up a new system - but Oooh I'm sure it would be worth it

 

Nath.

[free4440273]

Windows Vista just round the corner...

[free4440273]

...so why not intentionally decimate our systems - and then approach the head for a brand shiny new system...

[MkII]

I like your reasoning there free0934876234!

 

My system is going off so that the server room can be refurbished over the 2 weeks. First they applied the usual layer of brick dust to smooth things over

[free4440273]

...then they destroy your cat-5 points...free will do.

[Face-Man]

I told staff that the network was down for two day tomorrow three weeks ago for firmware update on the switches. This advice appeared in the staff bulliten..... by our data manager

 

The network will be down for two days on the 21st and 22nd December. This will hamper staff access to SIMS on these two days.

 

No more than capita do already I thought....

[darkest_star]

Having in the past shut the entire system down and then sat there rubbing the lucky rabbits foot (not lucky for the rabbit) hoping that everything comes back on line which it does not always do, We will be keeping all servers and network equipment on during the closed period.

 

Even the power costs are worth it here just so that staff coming back into school have a system that is up and running.

[OverWorked]

I used to shut them down, but then the Head moaned because he came in during the holidays to work, so now I leave it all on.

 

I had a scary time in my first year here, when rebooting the only DC a week before the school restarted. Dead motherboard. It was an old server so there was no way of replacing like-for-like. I had a good tape backup, but that wouldn't restore on to a different hardware.

 

I ended up buying a new server (we needed one anyway) and rebuilding the entire domain from scratch, user accounts, GPO's, the lot. It took 6 weeks before it was fully functional.

 

Now I have 2 DC's in case this happens again, at least I'll have a good working machine with the AD.