scheduled reboots

[billieperez]

Hello -

I was wondering what the recommendations are for reboots of HP-UX servers - is it a good idea to reboot every 6 months/1 year/2 years or just let the system keep running. We have several servers here that have uptimes of close to 2 years and my manager is wondering if we should reboot them. My feeling is to not reboot them unless there is patching or kernel changes or other maintenance or installs that rqeuires a reboot, but I was looking for other thoughts on the subject. I checked the forum but didn't see much about this.

Thanks in advance

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

I agree whole-heartedly with your feelings - don't reboot them unless necessary. There is really nothing to be gained.


Pete

[DCE]

Reboots should be kept to a minimum. There is really no reason to cycle the server unless it is for maintenance or patching.

Of course it is important to keep the system current on patches, which means applying the a patch bundle at least once a year. This will (usually) result in a reboot.

[hpuxrox]

In some environments a reboot is considered a critical change, and requires change control board approval, unless the reboot it reactive to a system problem.

What is your justification for the reboot? What is your back-out plan if the system doesnâ t come back online? Is the risk worth the reward?

[Sundar_7]

Though it is not windows that you have to reboot every week, reboot schedule again depends on what kind of application you run on the system.

Most of the UNIX applications tend to be well-written but there are few which can be lousy , especially with their Memory Management.

I agree you dont have much to gain but if you have installed softwares and made changes that perse don't necessitate reboot, and you have been running the system for the last 2 yrs, it may just be worthwhile to schedule a downtime with the business and reboot the system. That will atleast make sure every services that you want to get started on boot, get started.

Just my 2cents. I am sure you are going to lot of different opinion on this but you know your environment and how difficult it is to get downtime than most others in forum :-)

[Jeff_Traigle]

I've worked at a few places the past few years. I was amazed that 2 of the 4 were either already rebooting their HP-UX systems regularly or were in the process of implementing reboots at customer requests. Seems HP once upon a time supposedly recommended this and the idea stuck stubbornly with these managers. If you're patching systems like you're supposed to, you're going to have 2 reboots every year at a minimum anyway and that should be all that's required under normal circumstances. Anything beyond that is superfluous effort.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If you belong to the "don't reboot for 1 or 2 years" club then you as just as wrong as those in the "periodic reboot" club because clearly, the periodic patch sets are not being applied in a timely manner. This makes you a member of the "it ain't broke so don't patch it" club ---- which actually makes you a member of the "it's broke but you don't know it yet" club.

[billieperez]

Thanks for all the reponses. I really appreciate the feedback and opinions, you all have good points.

[Bob E Campbell]

I think that you understand that HP-UX can run for a while, but wanted to expand on ACS's comments. Patches are released to fix a variety of problems. In particular some resolve security issues and others critical problems such as system panics and data loss.

How important these patches are depends on your system. You need to treat an online credit card database differently than a file server on a closed subnet. You need to define what fixes are important enough for a reboot.

After that, you have to pay attention to the issues to know when you need to plan for downtime. You can use Software Assistant (SWA) to create reports on security bulletins, critical patches, and critical patch warnings. When an issue is seen that needs to be fixed, SWA can also be used to download the patches into a depot ready for installation.

Go to https://hp.com/go/swa for more information or to download.

I used to have a system that had almost been running for 1000 days, then they shut the power off for the building. Hard to escape that one.
Bob

[billieperez]

closing thread, thanks for the info