Overnight turn off?

[david_1152]

I dont want to mention energy bills, but...

 

We're looking to turn off pretty well every computer over night, say after six pm. Something we haven't done before as there was the question of wear and tear on the systems. What's everyones views on that, am I behind the times and everyone already does, or is it really not worth it?

 

Thanks

 

D

[Jawloms]

We run Impero so a lot of stuff is on a timeout shutdown, but then we have a script which runs the shutdown command for every single computer name in AD on a Friday evening.

[Jaan]

Yeah We turn our pcs off every night with triggers at 7:30pm and 9pm.

 

We use our ABtutor instance to do this.

 

We did have it set earlier but people didn't like to click the "abort shutdown" button if prompted.

[Norphy]

Turning computers off at night is a no brainer, tbh. They're used for eight hours a day, tops. That's 16 hours they're sitting there doing nothing. Even if they're in power saving mode, they're still consuming.

 

I've used EMCO Remote Shutdown at two different employers and it's very good. It can do WOL as well, if you want to automate startup. It's cheap as well.

[mavhc]

I set them to sleep after 10 mins, hibernate after 1 hour, why even leave them on during the daytime when sleep works great

[Norphy]

While I don't disagree with you as such, I (along with probably most of the people on here) found that a lot of users were downright offended if "their" computer wasn't instantly available to them when they wiggled the mouse. The dreaded "Teaching and learning" catchphrase was often employed, along with murmurings that their precious charges couldn't possibly wait the two minutes it takes for the machine to boot or wake up from hibernation as it takes too much time out of the lesson.

 

Therefore, it makes everybody's life easier if they don't go to sleep or hibernate during the day. It's dumb, I know, but sometimes you need to pick your battles.

[Dos_Box]

I always had my desktops shut down overnight on all the networks I've run. In fact it was a policy of the places I worked at. Like others with network management software, I used NetSupport to do this. The only things left running were the servers.

As regards wear and tear, this isn't really an issue and the old adage about PC's taking more power to turn on than keep them on standby is a bit of a misnomer IMO as since spinning disks went the way of the Dodo in desktops, and boot times are vastly quicker and use less power than ever now.

I remember classrooms full of Pentiums 4 PC's dimming the school lights when they were switched on each morning (ok, this bit isn't true, but the temp in the rooms would rise rapidly after bootup!).

[FN-GM]

I have been doing this since at least 2009, they close down at 6pm ish. I use a scheduled task that executes a batch file stored on a network share. The batch file contains:

 

shutdown -s -f -t 0

 

I could also stop the shutdown by renaming the batch file. Useful for events such as a parents evening.

 

Using this instead of something like LanSchool, NetSupport etc meant that you didn't have to remember to do it manually and covered computers that didn't have it installed.

 

Regular shutdowns also helped cut down the tickets! It also ensured the computers are properly patched.

 

couldn't possibly wait the two minutes it takes for the machine to boot

 

I also had automatic boot. You can set it in the BIOS of many vendors. WOL is also an option.

Edited September 2, 2022 by FN-GM

[elsiegee40]

I might be stating the obvious here, but shutting everything off at night doesn’t mean the servers no matter how big the energy bill.

 

Nor does it mean turning off the power to the laptop charging cabinets, the server room aircon or the switch cupboards.

 

Not saying anyone on this forum would contemplate it, but the users in energy saving mode can get strange ideas and they do need education on why this isn’t a good idea. (Got that T shirt [emoji57] )

[dmj]

I might be stating the obvious here, but shutting everything off at night doesn’t mean the servers no matter how big the energy bill.

 

One of my projects right now is to do exactly that, to scale down certain server clusters to zero at night and weekends.

Customer facing servers automatically shut down when the load is low already, but they always have something to take a load and scale up as necessary, we've just never tried scaling to zero before!

[FN-GM]

I might be stating the obvious here, but shutting everything off at night doesn’t mean the servers no matter how big the energy bill.

 

Not always the case. Out of hours, I have configured VMware clusters to move Virtual Machines to small number of hosts and power down any unneeded server hardware. In the morning everything automatically goes back.

 

I have also done this with physical terminal servers. Only a small number were needed during the night, the rest could be automatically powered down. I worked for bank in 2011 and they had hundreds of terminal servers. As a result they could power off hundreds overnight. Not quite to that scale in schools though!

 

 

My current employer is 24x7 so not as easy to power everything off.

 

 

Nor does it mean turning off the power to the laptop charging cabinets

 

Maybe this could be a feature of newer cabinets, power down after a number of hours (when everything is charged) to avoid waste.

 

 

 

 

Thinking out loud here. Maybe setup a cron job on switches to shutdown (and re-enable) POE network ports for things like IP Phones. It would reduce the power consumption of the switch. Not sure by how much though, not sure if it is worth it.

 

 

Devices to cut the power on laser printers and copier will save a heap. They consume lots of energy when in standby.

Edited September 2, 2022 by FN-GM

[dmj]

Thinking out loud here. Maybe setup a cron job on switches to shutdown (and re-enable) POE network ports for things like IP Phones. It would reduce the power consumption of the switch. Not sure by how much though, not sure if it is worth it.

 

Wifi AP's would be a good addition. I bet those things cost a few quid to run.

An Ansible script would be the way to do this on cron IMO. Software defined Networking

[free780]

Could cause issues with cctv if reliant on switches.

[FN-GM]

Could cause issues with cctv if reliant on switches.

 

You would power off specific ports, not the whole switch. Just don’t include ports used by CCTV cameras.

[elsiegee40]

And I think my point has been made. It’s not as simple as shutting everything down at $time snd then powering back up next morning.

 

Establishment users need to be aware of this because as far as they’re concerned, servers and switches are “just computers”.

Edited September 2, 2022 by elsiegee40

[ZeroHour]

Wifi AP's would be a good addition. I bet those things cost a few quid to run.

 

The new Unifi u6-pros I have been testing using around 5-7W PoE when with a few devices and little traffic at night, to give an equivalent a lot of GU10 bulbs etc are around 5W so its less of an issue for Unifi but I dont know about others.

[jthompson]

I set them to sleep after 10 mins, hibernate after 1 hour, why even leave them on during the daytime when sleep works great

 

Ditto. Regularly going in and out of sleep is how MS expect Windows to be used these days, it feels to me.

 

PCs and laptops are the one part of the IT estate that can look after it's own power management quite well. It's all the other stuff that needs more effort. Scheduling the powerdown of switch ports for phones and APs out of hours sounds quite interesting, although I think I'd have concerns about running those devices in ways that they've not been built for. If you were to keep APs running, but turned off their radios, would that save much energy?

[mavhc]

While I don't disagree with you as such, I (along with probably most of the people on here) found that a lot of users were downright offended if "their" computer wasn't instantly available to them when they wiggled the mouse. The dreaded "Teaching and learning" catchphrase was often employed, along with murmurings that their precious charges couldn't possibly wait the two minutes it takes for the machine to boot or wake up from hibernation as it takes too much time out of the lesson.

 

Therefore, it makes everybody's life easier if they don't go to sleep or hibernate during the day. It's dumb, I know, but sometimes you need to pick your battles.

 

Why is it taking 2 mins to come back from hibernation?

 

And if so, just leave it in sleep mode, S3, 95% of the power savings with 5 second wake up time.

[free780]

You also have the issue of applying updates at night that may be a requirement.

 

I do like the idea of MFDs being powered down though.

[mavhc]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-server-update-services/deploy/4-configure-group-policy-settings-for-automatic-updates#enabling-windows-update-power-management-to-automatically-wake-up-the-computer-to-install-scheduled-updates

[Sonic007]

We push certain updates at night so keep machines on on some nights but shutdown on others.

[ZeroHour]

Why is it taking 2 mins to come back from hibernation?

Usually lack of an SSD can cause that.

[mikeprice]

We used to shutdown everything at night using AB Tutor

then start them in the morning using 'Wake on LAN"

 

Worked well and did save on power when we monitored it

 

mind you that was a long time ago when I worked in a Secondary school

 

I was wondering whether it would be OK to switch of the power to the laptop chargers overnight and at weekend assuming they all had time to charge before they were needed

updates and the like allowing?

 

surely a decent charger will protect the laptop from any power spikes - which the cab should do as well - and the laptops should have been shutdown anyway??

 

 

or am I talking whatsits

[jmak]

The last laptop trolley I had had a built-in timer so that the laptops and chargers didn't just warm the room up overnight.

[dmj]

The new Unifi u6-pros I have been testing using around 5-7W PoE when with a few devices and little traffic at night, to give an equivalent a lot of GU10 bulbs etc are around 5W so its less of an issue for Unifi but I dont know about others.

 

Wow that's much less than I was expecting, but if they're not being used it all adds up.