Post how many PCs you run 24/7 at home ?

Subliminal Aura · 11 Mar 2007 at 13:28

Just curious as to how much noise and dust pollution I'm pushing out.

This is strictly machines that are ON 24/7 and for machines that have a purpose (distributed computers / farms and crunchers which are barely motheboards ram and cpu are EXCLUDED).

So heres what I have left at home :

Main room where I work : 2 desktop pcs bridged linux and windows + 1 embedded PC which does my routing, X10/ automation / wap gateway. = 3

Noise room : 1 Filestore seconday backup store with webcache/dnscache, 1 dev box databases webapps primary backup store, 1 win2003 server databases etc. 1 hot backup for a live machine in a data centre. = 4

Excluding crunchers, temporary machines and laptops that takes me to 7 run 24/7.

Subliminal Aura · 11 Mar 2007 at 13:32

jonno.co.uk said:
none at home, just use hibernate instead.

i cannot see why anyone in the world would need 7 PC's on in a single household. sort it out.

Yeh its true I've been going through the threads looking at peoples postings and I think I have got it well wrong ! As Gilly says 'NONE' is the best policy since they do waste a lot of time

Subliminal Aura · 11 Mar 2007 at 13:34

Gilly said:
I hope he works constantly from home otherwise its pretty stupid.

Dammit please don't rub it in ! I came to the stark conclusion that maybe something is wrong with me over the last hour hence the purpose of this thread....

Surely there must be some nerd out there whose built a cluster at home :eek:

Fingers cross in anticipation of NOT being labeled super nerd

Subliminal Aura · 11 Mar 2007 at 13:55

Gilly said:
It seems to me that you're overplaying this, and you're showing off that you have so many machines running 24/7 doing different things.

Seriously Gilly - I'm not milking it I have been doing this for years, as I said I came to the stark conclusion after viewing numerous Post pics of your setup threads here that maybe I have a bit too much going over the top and the yes I should just maybe get a quad core and vmware some of my stuff.

As far as keeping a hot backup of a machines in a DC is concerned that is vital as disks do fail under such circumstances I can just pull a disk out of a machine run down to a DC pop it in rewrite the boot header and away it goes.

Think I'll move a lot of the services off the machines and make better usage of my equipment

//edit probably a key factor to why I run these machines is to ensure that they are all hot backups. I have lost data and its not a pretty scenario and yes I am a developer

Subliminal Aura · 11 Mar 2007 at 14:00

Adam said:
Why though? If it works for you then why change? However, for the everyday home user it is pointless leaving your computer on 24/7. Mine gets turned off when I leave the house unless im downloading.

Noise and dust pollution - not good with kids about

I was thinking of moving them to the loft but the temperature extremes up there may not be good for equipment (baking hot in the summer and freezing in the winter)

Subliminal Aura · 11 Mar 2007 at 14:08

Adam said:
Noise: yes I can understand that if its keeping someone awake.
Dust: not so sure. The computer will only be sucking in dust that is already in the air, it won't be adding any dust to the air.

Noise : I enjoy silent computing hence the reason why my servers are not in the same room as me ! I would simply die if they were.

Dust : True but dust settles but I would have thought that fans keep the dust in the atmosphere for longer ? Maybe ?

Subliminal Aura · 11 Mar 2007 at 16:31

Silent Bob said:
1 mITX 533mhz running xp acting as a rounter (the ethernet port on the cable modem doesn't work, so having to use usb).

Tell your ISP that your cable modem is bust

mITX 533 stinks of what I have as a router is it a Lex system ? If so I dare not even think how long it takes to boot up windows

Mine runs busybox and some hand crafted daemons so boots up in no time.

Subliminal Aura · 11 Mar 2007 at 16:59

Combat squirrel said:
He has a point, also if a machine is on constantly its highly likely more to fail as a backup device

LESS likely to fail I would have thought. Power up and power down cycles were common causes for disk failures.

I think you miss the point of how my machines back up. A master syncs via the internet every hour this master must be up 24/7. The master then dumps its self onto a local machine which is the master backup for all my local machines (laptops pdas etc) that then gets dumped onto the filestore. Yes it might be overkill but at least my data is save

Anyhoooo I have just decommissioned my windows 2003 server having been at it since last night. Powering down now.