I believe this is a slightly controversial topic, at least from what I have gathered so far. Some say its best to leave the server on to spare the life time of the spinning rust. Other seem to prefer to save power and boot the server off each night. So wanted to chip in and hear what folks here do and why do what you do.
Bonus question; Do you guys have a UPS? Is it a must have for a homelab, or does it just depend on the usecase?
I have solar, so the power consumption is negligible, I am already mostly selling yo the network and not "consuming" most of the days. Also, the server stuff sits in a sound proofed and ventilated compartment in the most remote area of the house.
Could be that it is hosting services that are only actively used instead of passively doing stuff, so no real need to have the server on when you're sleeping. For me turning it off and on again would be more of a hassle than it's worth it.
Agreed. First of all that would make running backups more complex, and would require either manual interaction, or very careful automation of some kind.
And any public facing service (like blog and some stuff) would still need to be accessible somehow, so...