Thermal Stress Issues

The goal of the Power Management software is to conserve electricity. You should also take into account how an increase in power cycling affects the overall reliability of the hardware.

The Power Management software is active by default on sun4u systems, such as the Sun Ultra 1. Accordingly, the Power Management system for those machines evaluates each automatic power-cycle request that occurs due to the system being idle. If an evaluation determines that the thermal shock of power cycling on a particular occasion would decrease hardware reliability, then that power-cycle request is deferred.

Despite this feature, you can choose to turn off a sun4u system manually at any time. This checking feature prevents an excessive number of automatic power-cycle requests to the hardware.