Don’t Shut Down or Hibernate Those Computers at Night...

For years there has been a running discussion about turning off PCs at night. One camp said turning them off saved power; the other said leaving them on reduced wear and tear on hardware. Today, energy efficient workstations with robust hardware have made both of these points largely moot.

However, there is a very good reason for not turning off your workstations―at least Monday through Thursday. On each weekday night, DynaSis performs system operations, from critical system patches and virus definition updates to backups. On weekends, we usually perform operations on servers, when they are not in use. We create schedules for every company that details what we do, and when. (If you are curious what we do in the wee hours of the morning, see image below for an example.)

In fact, even setting your PC to Sleep or Hibernate mode can prevent us from performing system operations on them. Just one unavailable PC can cause the network to be out of sync and potentially increase risk for the entire office. If you and your employees feel better powering down your workstations (but not servers) over the weekend, go ahead. Most importantly, during the week, please keep workstations on and available (not in sleep or hibernate mode).