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rebooting a windows 2003 server every month

 
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Fernando Acevedo
Frequent Advisor

rebooting a windows 2003 server every month

I know here are the best of the best administrators, so I have a question for you guys, is there a good reason to reboot a windows 2003 server every month?, as a procedure we have that practice in our company but I am not sure this practice prevent or help something, so please give me your point of view. the procedure says this is for prevent some kind of degradation in the system.
Thanks
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Ganesh Babu
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: rebooting a windows 2003 server every month

in my personal opinion, i will not recommend this.

The server has to be rebooted only if there is any critical issue (this occurence of critical issue is more than anyother operating system though). In our environment we have servers running for more than 7-8 months without a reboot..

But not on assumptions that there will be some kind of degradation in the server. If they think the server is having some kind of degradation, find them and fix them. Instead of going for reboots..

Ganesh

Norman_21
Honored Contributor

Re: rebooting a windows 2003 server every month

Fernando,

I believe your company is trying to sechedule a DOWNTIME for the Server!
This white paper discusses how Windows Server 2003 is enhanced to promote maximum reliability and around-the-clock availability. It outlines the features that allow administrators to proactively manage processes to prevent server downtime. It describes failover services and clustering technologies that work together with Network Load Balancing and Windows Clustering to help maximize uptime. These services combine to insulate an IT infrastructure from program and service failures.
Refer to this Article and download the White paper from M$.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;818648&Product=winsvr2003

Good luck!
"Attitudes are contagious, is yours worth catching"/ My first point was given by SEP on January 31, 2003
Jon Finley
Honored Contributor

Re: rebooting a windows 2003 server every month

Well.... there are STILL some applications that have/cause memory leaks (ColdFusion MX 6.1 with JRun is one of them). In that case, you may not have a choice. Preventative maintenance would demand that a system reboot be preformed to reclaim the lost memory.

If because of certain applications/services, performance degrades over time, or fewer and fewer Users can connect, then certainly, reboot on a schedule.

Other than that, there should be no reason to have to reboot a server, other than when applying required patches, fixes or upgrades.

Jon
"Do or do not. There is no try!" - Yoda
Rune J. Winje
Honored Contributor

Re: rebooting a windows 2003 server every month

It is a sensible scheme.

Memory fragmentation will occur over time, but to a much lesser extent in Windows Server 2003 compared to Windows 2000 and NT.

Also if considering the Web server in Win2K3 (IIS 6.0) then this has built in advanced processes to recycle and restart the various web-processes (while at the same time being always online) to proactively avoid any memory fragmentation and performance problems.

However applications and/or how busy the server is could increase the need for reboot.

In general however monthly reboots for these reasons alone may be (much) more often than needed. A Windows 2003/2000 server may work unattended for many months and even years.

However there is also security hotfixes to consider. These are as we all know released quite often by MS and a reboot is often recommended for these, so a monthly reboot would be a good idea for this alone.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;822180
http://www.entmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=5994


Cheers,
Rune
Norman_21
Honored Contributor

Re: rebooting a windows 2003 server every month

I totally agree with the Guys that it's a good idea to refresh the Server but you must schedule a Down Time if your company is very picky about the Uptime performance!

Good luck
"Attitudes are contagious, is yours worth catching"/ My first point was given by SEP on January 31, 2003
Jon Finley
Honored Contributor

Re: rebooting a windows 2003 server every month

BTW.. I "believe" MS's Security update schedule now is the first Tuesday of every month.

Jon
"Do or do not. There is no try!" - Yoda