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I'm rather new with Windows / Windows server administration. I heard that rebooting Windows servers everyweek is required to keep it functioning well. So here, we reboot every Virtual Machine running Windows everyday at a specified time, automatically.

Coming from a Unix background, I find that rather surprising. But since I don't know much about Windows (actually, I know absolutely nothing about managing Windows Servers) , I was wondering, is there really a use for that?

Thank you,

Jean-François Rioux
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    No. That practice is decades old by now and no longer necessary or recommended. – squillman Jun 09 '14 at 14:04
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    I heard that rebooting Windows servers every week is required to keep it functioning well - Stop listening to internet rumors and stop letting the internet dictate how you manage your systems. Anyone who reboots their servers because 'they heard it on the internet' should probably not be managing those servers. – joeqwerty Jun 09 '14 at 14:10
  • I've heard it from senior administrator at my job... that's why I was curious to find out more. – Jean-François Rioux Jun 09 '14 at 14:13
  • Never did scheduled reboots even in the Windows NT 4 days. Some applications / software was poorly written and leaked various resources and memory which eventually caused problems. Rebooting fixed these but absent such software there isn't a reason to. – Brian Jun 09 '14 at 14:14
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    ...and even in the way back days, when this was more common, regular reboots were the lazy or unskilled admin's way out at that. One of my systems running Windows 95 (because it was attached to some HVAC which required '95) had uptimes that were usually >1 year, which not exactly difficult to achieve. – HopelessN00b Jun 09 '14 at 14:38

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The only reason rebooting a server would make any sense is if it had a major memory leak that could not be resolved... or similar such issues.

If the server is otherwise fine, it doesn't need a reboot, and it doesn't increase the "health" of the server at all.

It's a bit like switching your car off and back on at every set of red lights. All you'd be doing is stopping the OS, and bringing it back up, for no reason.

Vasili Syrakis
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