We have a debate going.
I say: set the mission critical server W2003 to automatically reboot every monday morning at 3:00 AM to free up resources and place system in optimal state for upcoming work week – thus increasing availability.
The opposition says: this places excessive stress on the hard drives (raid 5) and other components, ie. fans, power supplies, etc. and will cause premature failure of components.
I have tons of stats that disk drive testing incorporates stress testing, start-stop, etc. when determining Mean Time To Failure (MTTF)so I think this arguement is empty.
I cannot find anything from a Best Practices view point that is backed by research. You can bet someone has the stats but I just can’t find em. Server is W2003, dual quad cores, 16GB Ram, Raid-5, high speed SATA drives 15K rpm. I am looking for info on general, everyday, business conditions.
Thanks