Everywhere I've worked as a Sybase DBA, there was the monthly shutdown
and restart of the Sybase server. Some places did it weekly.

I've been chasing around to find out the reason why this is done. It
is just tradition? Or is there a valid technical reason such as the
maintenance of statistics on database contents?

If anyone can point me to the Sybase manual page that details the
reasons why, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

"Byrocat" <bdealhoy (AT) sympatico (DOT) ca> wrote


There is no immediate technical need for a regular ASE restart. However, ASE
may sometimes get a bit 'confused' in its internal memory structures,
leading to all different kinds of problems. Note that this is rare though,
and even more so in recent ASE versions; in the old days (version 10.0,
11.0), this occurred more often (though still rarely) than in today's ASE
versions.
So you could see a restart as a kind of preventive maintenance -- if you
have an opportunity to do this every 1-3 months, I'd do it. Doing it every
week seems too frequent.

Performance-wise, the only price you pay is that the data cache needs to be
re-poplated, so after a restart initially queries may be a little slower
'cos they're doing more physical I/O. Of course, if you have a large data
cache and/or a large tempdb, rebooting ASE may take some time just by
itself.

HTH,

Rob
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Rob Verschoor

Certified Sybase Professional DBA for ASE 12.5/12.0/11.5/11.0
and Replication Server 12.5

Author of Sybase books (order online at www.sypron.nl/shop):
"Tips, Tricks & Recipes for Sybase ASE"
"The Complete Sybase Replication Server Quick Reference Guide"
"The Complete Sybase ASE Quick Reference Guide"

mailto:rob (AT) YOUR (DOT) SPAM.sypron.nl.NOT.FOR.ME
http://www.sypron.nl
Sypron B.V., P.O.Box 10695, 2501HR Den Haag, The Netherlands
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