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Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

 
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Candace Pettit
Advisor

Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

Hello everyone. I have a somewhat objective question and I wanted to see if I could get some good opinions.

We recently upgraded to 11.31 from an 11.0 system. We had a reboot scheduled every day except Sunday at 1:45am.

We're looking into expanding business from an 8 to 5 schedule in some areas to 24 hours and we've been looking anew at the rebooting schedule.

Is it still a good idea to reboot our 11iv3 system on a daily basis? Is it possible to extend that to rebooting once a week?


Thank you.
19 REPLIES 19
Patrick Wallek
Honored Contributor

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

>>We had a reboot scheduled every day except Sunday at 1:45am.

Why??? Was there a problem?

>>Is it still a good idea to reboot our 11iv3 system on a daily basis?

Was it ever a good idea to reboot the systems daily? In my opinion, and experience, a well tuned, well behaved, well running system can run for YEARS without being rebooted. I have lots of systems that I reboot twice yearly when I patch them and that is all.

>>Is it possible to extend that to rebooting once a week?

Absolutely! But you REALLY REALLY REALLY need to revisit the reason behind rebooting these systems so often. These are NOT Windows servers! They don't have to be rebooted like a Windows server does.

If you are running some application that causes you to have to reboot due to its inefficiencies, talk with the application vendor and get it fixed.
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

> [...] Is it still a good idea to reboot our
> 11iv3 system on a daily basis? [...]

Was it _ever_ a good idea? Why???
Candace Pettit
Advisor

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

Thank you for your replies so far. Let me explain a little.

I joined this IT team a little over two years ago. It was mainly our CIO and one or two others who were maintaining the system.

The hardware we were previously on was 17 years old, and these reboots had been put into place at that time on the HP-UX 9 system.

In that time, it was never a necessity to look into the reboot schedule, plus the manpower wasn't available to "fix what wasn't broken", so to speak.

Now our IT department is larger and we can look at these type of things. So one of my duties since I came on is to bring our HP-UX system management more in line with the times and how other admins are operating.

I gather the general consensus is that we can do much longer reboots. Could I also ask what logfiles you find it important to trim on these longer reboot schedules (for those that don't go years) and what sort of scripts you might have in place?

Basically what we want to determine is what maintenance/admin sort of tasks that we're not doing now that we should be.

Thank you again for your assistance.
Candace Pettit
Advisor

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

I apologize. We are now off our much older system onto an rx2660 system.
Bill Hassell
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

As Patrick mentioned, you don't need to reboot HP-UX for years -- as long as your patches are up to date. But many kernel and network patches will require rebooting your server, so your reboot will be handled by your semi-annual or quarterly patch schedule. (you are keeping up to date on patches, correct?). A cold install of 11.31 needs several dozen patches.


Bill Hassell, sysadmin
Candace Pettit
Advisor

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

Yep, those who were maintaining the system always kept up on patches and updates for the 11.0 system.

As my boss explained it, the system they started on was incredibly small in size, much much smaller than we have now. So a nightly reboot made more sense. Then it was just a habit that was kept in place since the possibilty of extension had not been researched.

Does someone know of a reference somewhere of good tips on recommended routine tasks? I want to make sure that we're trimming the necessary logfiles, doing the recommended hardware checks and other things of that nature.

I'm not an expert admin by any means. I've taken the two classes and am preparing for my certification exam. So any advice from veterans of this sort of thing would be most appreciated.
Candace Pettit
Advisor

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

Sorry for the double post again. We are also completely up-to-date on 11.31 patches.
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

> [...] So a nightly reboot made more sense.
> [...]

Why?
Bob E Campbell
Honored Contributor

Re: Reboot Schedule for HP-UX 11iv3 system.

You should not need to reboot the system to trim the log files, and on your new system you should have plenty of space under /var. If you find you are still cramped we can help you with that.

If you have logs that are growing at a rapid rate, take a look inside. If you have not been keeping the data, you might not need the same level of information.

Based on your past experience why not schedule a monthly patch window. You do not *have* to install anything, you just give yourself the opportunity. If you work with DRD (http://www.hp.com/go/DRD) it will be similar to a sluggish reboot.