Very Computer

Regards

Matt

520 (AIX 3.2.5) 424 days
F80 (AIX 4.3.3) 174 days
59H (AIX 4.3.2) 93 days

I would only ever shut them down because of hardware failure, necessary
reconfiguration or upgrade etc.   Just use errpt to monitor and watch
for anything going wrong.

reboot is not required after a number of days or months o years.
But also without any recommending, we boot our SP2-Cluster
every 4 weeks - don't know why, but our customer want to have a
reboot every month

Friedhelm

Generally speaking, UNIX machines don't require a 'periodic' reboot. I
can't speak about non-UNIX/VMS/mainframe machines, however. ;)

Only reasons why you reboot an AIX machine is:

        a) special upgrade involving kernel or critical libraries
        b) device driver upgrade that can't take effect immediately
        c) serious DoS attack situation where reboot is fastest way to recover

No reason to reboot a machine, otherwise. So we don't have a planned
downtime thing except for periodic OS/app patching -- we try to do this
every 3-4 months or so, in order to get the greatest amount of support
from IBM when we do call in a potential bug or * situation. For example,
sometimes IBM support will (understandably) insist that you patch your
system to at least the latest revs or even the most current maintenance
level patch set, and then try to reproduce the problem before they will
work further on it.

It also gives us time to test a new cut of a patch set on various hardware
and software combinations before committing it to production machines.

Financial apps generally means change management and testing is paramount,
so sounds like you'd probably be looking at a minimum of 6 (or even 12)
months between significant updates or reboots. Won't be a problem at all.

It all boils down to... you reboot your machines when you need to. ;)

When will you need to? (See items 'a', 'b', and 'c')

How often do you do these items (well, at least 'a' or 'b') will depend
on how much system/app downtime you are comfortable with and can afford.
Some sites, once every 20 years (like Irish Railways and their VMS system
that ran the track signal controllers)... some, once a week... some, once
every few months... some, once every six or twelve months, etc.

-Dan

(email sent to original poster as a courtesy and posted to comp.unix.aix)

Regards

Matt

Welcome to the world of reliable and stable systems!