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I am very new to server administration and just learning the stuff. I have just inherited a Supermicro 1U Server X7DBU running openSuse 12.3. Is it possible to configure it to go to sleep or low power mode after some period of inactivity? Is it a linux operation or server configuration?

HopelessN00b
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Dinesh
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    Why do you want a server to go into sleep mode? This is a pretty unusual configuration. – MDMarra Dec 05 '14 at 22:14
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    See, the thing about servers is... they're supposed to serve things. Typically 24/7. So generally, you don't want them going to sleep, though with most modern ones, you can limit their power consumption, though again, a feature I find to be of dubious value, and one that causes more problems than it solves. – HopelessN00b Dec 05 '14 at 22:15
  • @MDMarra it is a test server that I use it once in a while to run some simulations – Dinesh Dec 05 '14 at 22:19
  • @HopelessN00b it is just sitting there and consuming power uselessly most of the time which is what bothers me. If I could, I would like to curtail that purposeless consumption. – Dinesh Dec 05 '14 at 22:24
  • The problem is that every on/off cycle increases wear and tear of your server much more than steady-state running. – Deer Hunter Dec 05 '14 at 22:29
  • For part-time operation, consider running a virtual machine on some other server that is continuously used instead. – 200_success Dec 05 '14 at 22:32
  • The server supports Wake-On-LAN, you could enable that to be able to remotely turn it on when you're using it, and have a crontab that shuts down the machine if it's been inactive for some period of time. – austinian Dec 05 '14 at 22:35

1 Answers1

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Turn the server off when you're not using it. Turn it on when you need it.

For your purposes, you don't have any practical deep-sleep options for that Supermicro hardware that would be substantially better than poweroff/poewron.

There are exceptions to this... Look into the ACPI modes (especially S3 or S5) and acpitool.

For Linux, acpitool -s.

ewwhite
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  • +1 That's what I do now :) leaving it on for weekends. But want to leave the question open a little bit just in case someone could help me configure it for step down power usage. – Dinesh Dec 05 '14 at 22:32
  • @Dinesh See the `acpitool` command... – ewwhite Dec 05 '14 at 23:06