Preventative Maintenance?

[Craig Sheppard]

...Does anybody do this?

I used to run 2 ASIP 6.33 servers, and I'd take them down once a week for preventative maintenance. I've since upgraded one to OSX server, and the only times I've taken it down were to upgrade system software.

Comments?

-Craig

[at_sym]

I guess it depends on your definition of "preventative maintenance." When you took down the ASIPs, were you defragging the drives, running Norton/Tech Tool, or just restarting to free up RAM and zap any kinks?

[Craig Sheppard]

Originally posted by at_sym
I guess it depends on your definition of "preventative maintenance." When you took down the ASIPs, were you defragging the drives, running Norton/Tech Tool, or just restarting to free up RAM and zap any kinks?

Usually just restarting, DFA-ing and backing up the Appleshare PDS files. Occasionally NDD, TechTool, or DiskWarrior. Rarely Defragging (It's a pretty big fileserver, and I don't like sleeping overnight in my office)

Thanks a lot!

Craig

[Craig R. Arko]

My intention when I get my OS X Server running later this week is to only restart to change hardware (on the SCSI bus mostly) or to do OS upgrades.

As I think of maintenance tasks I'll add them to the system crontab and let them go. :)

[Craig Sheppard]

Originally posted by Craig R. Arko
My intention when I get my OS X Server running later this week is to only restart to change hardware (on the SCSI bus mostly) or to do OS upgrades.

As I think of maintenance tasks I'll add them to the system crontab and let them go. :)

I'd like that to be my intention as well, but DFA won't repair the startup disk. What utils will you be using? Does MicroMat's Drive10 require a restart?

Craig

[Craig R. Arko]

Well, if I have to actually do a disk repair, probably shutting down to single user mode and running fsck is as good a choice as any.

Disk corruption doesn't usually 'just happen'; generally power outages, system crashes and forced restarts cause that. So those are the kinds of things to work to prevent.