Scheduled Tasks, Screen Savers, etc.

As previously mentioned in the hardware section (above), it is a good idea to avoid running unnecessary applications, services, etc. on your servers. Also, when scheduling necessary system tasks and operations (e.g. backups, defragmentation, virus scanning, etc.) it is best to attempt to schedule them for times and days when the server is expected to be under minimal load by users, so as to avoid affecting the users' perceptions of the system's performance while the scheduled operations are running.