Homelab

When the power goes out.

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 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.

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.

Only when I swap or upgrade internal hardware.

These run 24/7/365.

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

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.

3 months? i've had linux systems up for 3 years haha

Only when I type "shutdown" on the wrong console window.. New hardware or need to fix something.

So that's pretty rare 😂

I have built a UPS with 200AH 12V battery with inverter charger for RV. It never fails with power so it runs like for months until I decided to put something in… let’s see

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...

Sometimes I don’t need all the things running so I’ll kill a few pi’s and disks

You're rebooting them for update right?

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right?

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.

When do I shut down?

1. When the power goes out and my UPS battery drains.
2. When I do a hardware upgrade.
3. If I want to rearrange equipment, and also when I moved this past summer.

That's seriously about it.

Only if I need to move it or upgrade the components, and that happens maybe once a year, if not less.

If it weren't for that and power outages, they would have been on for 5+ years.

I don't ever shut them down "just because why not".

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.

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

Hardware change or power outage

I keep the stuff running 24/7, barely once a year for cleanup pretty much / upgrades or whatever. Don't mind me I still got to get a UPS for when the electricity goes down which it hasn't happen in the past years

ppl shut down there hosts? Since when? XD

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

Fairly frequently,but no real schedule. 3wks-3months, whenever I get some time to update without it being a problem. Primarily for patching & new kernels reasons but has caught the odd disk issue where btrfs was struggling and I didn't catch when running.

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.

It kind of also depends on the OS. And before the comments start; As with anything, situation & a bit of luck go a long way.

But Linux based machines can be left enabled for months, some times even years. Windows I Honestly wouldn't trust beyond a few months and even that would seem too much for my own taste.

I reboot my systems monthly most of the time, usually paired with updates. But my main host is Windows serv, which gets daily reboots (power savings, I don't need it on when I sleep), and the VMs on that are frozen & unfrozen so they are on for about a month or more until I do the above.

In the year mine has been running... it's been offline twice. Once, when upgrading the memory. The other was when I upgraded the processors. The only other time was a software update. Didn't require a reboot.

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.

i have a year of uptime, i need to shut down and clean the servers out but have not cared enough to do that.

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

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

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

I boot my big server whenever i need it, everything else is 24/7. I have had no catastrophic failures in either for the last 2-3 years, so it seems to be fine?

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

Once a month to install patch Tuesday updates because my only host is still running Microsoft Hyper-V 2019 server. Planning to switch to Proxmox that but gonna take a while so I haven't got myself around to do it.

Whenever there is a proxmox kernel update. Every few years to dust them If i get new hardware.

Lol. 236 days and 107 days since the last reboots of my two servers.