Power Management Help Please!

[JoeFulford]

Hi EduGeek,

 

I'm an IT Apprentice and am pretty much running the network in a secondary school I work at. The school is currently running Impero Remote Administration software that has a power management feature built into it although it doesn't actually work. I've done a lot of testing and can't seem to get it to power the machines off and then wake them again.

 

What software do you recommend I could use on the Network for power management and how I can monitor power usage? I'm doing this off my own back because I'd like to impress my line manager, who is also the director of business and finance.

 

Any suggestions and help would be much appreciated. Thankyou!

[RichCowell]

Impero should work for that - it's a great piece of kit...

 

Their support is fantastic too, they'll be able to help you out remotely... no point looking for anything else while you've already got that...

 

Give them a call or log in on their support forum and they'll get you sorted... Impero Software

[pcstru]

You can script shutdown and Wake on LAN pretty simply. Managing the data on MAC and machines names could be done in AD and then a few lines of powershell ... and bob's a member of the family. WOL does demand that switches allow the magic packets though and on a large network that may be a problem for Impero and any scripts. Client PC's also need to be configured to allow WOL.

 

(Can anyone confirm that Impero's power management does actually work - I've seen several reports suggesting it doesn't).

[RichCowell]

(Can anyone confirm that Impero's power management does actually work - I've seen several reports suggesting it doesn't).

 

I've created rules that shut all the PCs down at the end of the day and boot a couple of rooms up in the morning, and never had any problems with any of it... but I'm not sure that's the official "Power Management" feature - think it's just a manual approach...

[CyberDrac]

We had an issue which required us to alter our core switch configuration so that the WOL commands could be carried over the different VLANs, but now it's fine

[fxlite]

We had an issue which required us to alter our core switch configuration so that the WOL commands could be carried over the different VLANs, but now it's fine

 

To be honest, if you want to send WOLs to different subnets or VLANs I'd just give whatever server's NIC you were sending it from an IP on each VLAN, otherwise you'll have to set up a zillion iphelpers.

[andyire]

I can confirm Impero does work for PC, but I didnt have success with OS X when I set this up at my last school.

Also although it was initially described as possible it was later admitted by an Impero Tech that in fact it isn't possible to wake OS X up from sleep remotely.

Their advice was to walk to the suite and move mouse or .. etc..

 

Things to check RE power management would be

 

Client wise

- Client BIOS settings (wake on LAN allowed) - I have seen this setting referred to as many things.

- NIC settings via device manager in Windows (magic packet listening)

 

Switch wise

- As mentioned above if you have multiple subnets or VLANS on your network you will need to check if the WOL broadcast (typically UDP packets sent to port 7 or port 9) is allowed/forwarded between them. (IPHelpers)

 

Other things to consider are

- Virus protection / firewall on the Impero Server

- Are users powering the PC down and then turning off wall switches/ unplugging the units

 

 

If you struggle after you have tried these things and had no luck after contacting Impero Support,

it could be an option ( although slightly crude ) to write a simple batch script along the lines of

-------------- @echo off

shutdown -r

:EXIT

-------------

and create a scheduled task to run it on each PC at a certain time each evening.

 

There is also some power management control which can be had via group policy.