Reconciling overnight updates with energy savings

[dillonuw]

My school district currently uses GPO to ensure that PCs never go to sleep and stay on overnight to receive the latest software updates and policy. They do usually get shut down on Friday afternoons and then turned back on first thing on Monday.

 

I was recently approached by the business manager and asked if there was a way we could cut down on paper and energy use. Paper is another matter entirely, I have some proposals to cut down on that, but what are some ideas for the PCs? I have been in other districts before as well that all used the same policy - PCs on all night, shut down at weekends. What is a good practice for ensuring that PCs can get their updates while not in use, while also conserving energy?

 

Thanks.

[Rob_D]

You could schedule the updates for the early evening (say 6:30) and have the PCs shut down a couple of hours later.

Are there really updates every weekday? Could you have them update every other day or maybe just twice a week?

 

To be fair, we just let the PCs update during the day and it's not caused any problems.

[RLR]

I'm currently updating our MDT to deploy a bios configuration to turn machines on every Sunday at 11pm. I then have a WSUS group policy to apply updates every Sunday. We've always had a scheduled shut down group policy to turn machines off on an evening.

[msi_school]

I used to have my machines turn off at the end of the day and then come on for an hour in the middle of night for updates and shut down and then turn back on in time for the beginning of the school day.

 

I actually found this to be better than staying on 24/7 because the two reboots finished the updates rather than the update not always doing a restart and then requesting one later.

[jthompson]

We just let our computers pick up and install updates during their normal daily runtime. Any user-initiated start-ups and shutdowns take care of those updates that require a system restart.

[LukeMoss]

Our computers are scheduled to check for updates and install at 17:30 and shut down at 19:30. I've had no issues with this and all finish updates when powered on in the morning.

[dillonuw]

Thanks everyone. Several good ideas here. When you actually start thinking about it, overnight updates like that really do seem wasteful. They're probably updating for what, an hour on one day per week? And then the computer just sits idling until 8am... yeah, it's time for a change. My previous district was in the US and had over 6k devices- energy use wasn't a concern as long as the devices were ready to use at a moment's notice. The UK is more conscious about matters like this, so I'm having to approach things differently.

 

I think I will play with the schedule and try to get it to do updates much earlier and then do a full shutdown nightly.

 

Cheers!

[mavhc]

Windows can set the computer to wake up, install updates, and sleep again, just do that.

[eddyc]

We use a WOLCMD to power on all PCs at 07:30 so they’re on and ready before staff arrive.

 

We have a scheduled task and a script running from 3pm daily which checks if the machine is in use and if it isn’t shuts it down.

 

Every PC turns on at 11pm on a Sunday night for an hour to do any updates before shutting down again.

 

It works really well and has saved lots in cash. PCS were on 24/7 when I arrived here

[DrBeaker]

I used to have my machines turn off at the end of the day and then come on for an hour in the middle of night for updates and shut down and then turn back on in time for the beginning of the school day.

 

I actually found this to be better than staying on 24/7 because the two reboots finished the updates rather than the update not always doing a restart and then requesting one later.

 

How did you achieve this? Scheduled tasks etc? WoL?

[Rob_D]

How did you achieve this? Scheduled tasks etc? WoL?

I've always done it with scheduled WOL and shutdown scripts running from a server. At one point I played with using local scheduled tasks for shutdown, but it was a bunch more work for no real gain over a running from the server.

 

Works well for out of hours server rebooting as well.

[PotNoodleTech]

I'm sorry but leaving them on for 120 hours a week just to pick up 1 hours worth of updates across an entire district, is bonkers.

 

Maybe look at setting BIOS or WOL to bring them on at 6am and turn them off at 6pm so they get an hour before and and an hour after to do their thing.

[mavhc]

Windows can turn on the computer, just set it to the opposite of https://techjourney.net/prevent-disable-windows-update-from-waking-up-pc-system/

[msi_school]

How did you achieve this? Scheduled tasks etc? WoL?

 

I have used both Impero, scheduled tasks and BIOS wake up settings, Impero is easier to manage because it has a nice visual display of startup and shutdown times. Scheduled tasks are more reliable and BIOS settings are more reliable but require more work.