How do you do it: Power Management Software

[DalekSec]

Hi All,

 

I'm looking into ways of restarting our suite PCs at night and then for them to turn off and then switch on in the morning. At my last place we had some software that did it for us and i remember what it looks like but no idea what it's called! Even the people i used to work with can't remember.

 

So what do you guys use to do it? We don't have Impero or the like. We do have SCCM so thats an option.

[Steve21]

We have SCCM but don't use it for this.

 

Shutdowns we have standard scheduled task + BAT file for some whizziness in terms of if users are logged on.

 

Wake up we have a wol.exe that just fires off against MACs via scheduled task

 

Free is fun!

 

Steve

[mukz]

This might help @DalekSec

 

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/SCCMdocs/blob/master/sccm/core/clients/manage/power/administrator-checklist-for-power-management.md

 

We use ProfShutdown (My predecessor bought it even though we had netsupport and SCCM setup)

[Norphy]

EMCO Remote Shutdown is very good and not too much money. We covered our entire MAT for about £500 iirc

[Fazza]

We do have SCCM so thats an option.

 

That's what we use.

 

During the working day the power management on our computer suite PC's is set so to High Performance so they stay on all the time and then after hours any left on go to Power Saver where they go to sleep.

 

 

 

If you dont want to use SCCM you could always put a shutdown script on the computers in the Task Scheduler set to run at a particular time of day maybe?

[ITGURU]

Scheduled task shuts down our PCs in the evening. No need to have them set to boot up in the morning.

[Bionic]

Yep, scheduled task runs every evening to shut down PC's. Our PC's start-up in about a minute so no need to have them switch on automagically in the mornings ready for staff. Some staff used to complain about having to press the power button themselves, some staff complained that they couldn't find the power button. Quite comical really!

[Oaktech]

No need to have them set to boot up in the morning.

 

 

That's brave...

 

"Hey, @ITGURU Why has my machine been sat at 'configuring windows updates 55%' for the last 35 minutes? I could really use being able to read my emails/teach"

 

Mine turn on at 6.30am - about 30 minutes before the first person arrives in the office at 7am because I don't want to field a barrage of of 'my computer is configuring'. I missed a batch of machines off the start up XML file and it was carange after 'WSUS Wednesday' patch installs!

[ITGURU]

That's brave...

 

"Hey, @ITGURU Why has my machine been sat at 'configuring windows updates 55%' for the last 35 minutes? I could really use being able to read my emails/teach"

 

Mine turn on at 6.30am - about 30 minutes before the first person arrives in the office at 7am because I don't want to field a barrage of of 'my computer is configuring'. I missed a batch of machines off the start up XML file and it was carange after 'WSUS Wednesday' patch installs!

 

If it takes that long then i'd assume the machine got stuck anyway and need a hard reset! How do you miss machines off? I used WSUS, authorise the update on a Friday, set the deadline to the sunday, by Monday morning most machines have installed and rebooted.

 

With WSUS it reboots outside working hours so after an update it will reboot and finish the update..

[Oaktech]

If it takes that long then i'd assume the machine got stuck anyway and need a hard reset! How do you miss machines off? I used WSUS, authorise the update on a Friday, set the deadline to the sunday, by Monday morning most machines have installed and rebooted.

 

With WSUS it reboots outside working hours so after an update it will reboot and finish the update..

 

We seem to frequently get updates that take 30 minutes to process in the morning, usually the monthly updates for windows 10... Maybe our machines are just slow!

 

I missed machines off because I'm a pratt and added them to the shutdown TXT but not the start up XML.

 

We set machines to check at lunchtime on a Wednesday, install on a Wednesday night - the power schedule leaves them on until 7pm on a Wednesday to accommodate the install scheduled at 5.30. They don't automatically reboot ever because we've had this go rogue on a number of occasions. They turn off on the schedule and do the first part of the config, then turn on as mentioned at 6.30 and do the second part of the config if required and they're sat ready to go around 7am.

 

The machines don't turn on over the weekends as the scheduled task doesn't run, and we suspend the wake up scheduled task during the holidays - machines that are turned on still shut down.

 

We've had feedback from our energy efficiency assessment that they are more than happy with this.

[neonetman]

We use Faronics Powersave

[DJ-1701]

We use scripts to boot up and shutdown machines. Much nicer having control for it all as a scheduled task and not hard to setup. Just need the MAC addresses for WOL.

 

But, WOL might not be working as expected in the future versions of Windows 10... see here...

Very interesting... so are you saying that WOL itself is no longer supported then? Or the way that Impero has it implemented. I assume it's the former... in which case it would be an issue for even our own custom WOL commands or indeed any other 3rd party tools.

 

It's a bit of a mix. WOL is supported in some of the states that windows uses when you click shutdown. It's not supported if you do a full shutdown. What we're seeing is changes to the behaviour in the various shutdown states (MS classify them as S0 to S5 and G3).

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa373229(v=vs.85).aspx

 

 

When you perform a shutdown from Impero we currently run the full shutdown command which doesn't shutdown in a hybrid state. Currently Windows will still help out with the WOL in that state.

As of the creators edition, we're seeing on most machines it doesn't. And as that's something MS officially stopped supporting in Win8, it's not likely they'll change it (whether the change is intentional or accidental).

 

So to answer the question about the other tools; it's not about the other tool pa se, it's about the shutdown state the machine you're trying to wake is currently in.

 

Where Impero comes into this is that we specifically shut down into a state that will become difficult to wake once the new edition is out. So if your users currently shut down their own machines and that goes into an S3, for example, you'll be fine waking it from another tool, or for Impero. But if you use Impero (or various other tools) to shut everything down on a schedule for power saving, you may not be able to wake them.

So, if we're changing the state that we use, the question is what should we change it to, and how does that impact anything else you do.

 

 

This would mean that you could only wake the machine up, if it is in a hybrid sleep or sleep mode. Shutdown and full on hibernate mode would no longer be woken from.

Edited April 26, 2018 by DJ-1701