[thomaskcr]

> And don't forget the power bill. Some old servers idle at hundreds of watts, which will add up over the several years you leave it running. 24/7 server hardware is a good example of where it makes sense to be mindful of power consumption.

My rack has an always on laptop for applications that always "need" to be running. I then have an arduino in my office that's sole purpose is to wake on lan or power on via UPS until the servers are online when I turn my switch to the "on" position, and put them to sleep when in the off position. Any servers still on after 15 mins in the "off" position just get halted.

Once I did that and the friction of going on/off was so low my power consumption went way down.