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?
My servers are on 24/7, currently they use about 100watts each (I have 2 running), which adds maybe $20 to my electric bill. I also have stuff such as mailcow, nextcloud, and mattermost running, turning off every night would make those applications useless.
I have a shit APC desktop UPS. It keeps them on for 10-15 minutes at best.
Imo you probably save more money keeping the server up 24/7 than constantly shutting it down and starting it up again. Especially once you get a good list of services going.