Saving Electricity with IT Tech

[Moederloos]

Apologies if this is the wrong section. It is an IT based "solution" to assist with power shedding - which is current news.

A lot of companies leave PCs on overnight so as to allow virus updates and windows updates to be done.
The problem with this, is that the PCs are on during the peak 5-8pm window, and still on in the next mornings 6am-8am window. And they are wasting power.

How about this solution:
We utilise Wake On Lan (WOL) technology.

We need one PC / PC router that is left on - preferably something like Mikrotik Router OS or a linux box. This can be an older, low wattage machine, or even a router board. It can also be "headless". Consumption is minimal - but necessary.

Now, let us say we have 10 PCs in an office.
At midnight, we WOL PC 1. This starts up, launches an update, and then shuts down. We "know" the process takes 30 mins, so after 30 mins we ping this PC with a script, and as soon as it is offline, we WOL PC 2.
We repeat the process until 4am.
We can randomise the PC sequence, or alternate it daily. So day 2, we start with PC10. This "ensures" all PCs get a fair chance of being updated.
We can do Windows Updates on Sundays. That gives us more time.
More sophisticated environments can do local Updates.

What do people think? I reckon it would work a charm. The one downside is that windows PCs may not be that good at scripting the actual process, but it can "easily" be coded in a high level language like NET.

Unfortunately, this would work beautifully on linux PCs - but those do not need AV updates . May I ask that we keep this discussion to ways we can formalise this on Windows boxes, and leave any other Windows bashing for another thread? Pretty please?

 

[EtienneK]

Funny that you should mention this. This was actually discussed on Slashdot a few days ago: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/20/1642202&from=rss

I have also wondered about this the last few weeks. I know that companies do updates overnight, but a WOL mechanism would work perfectly for saving energy.

I think the ideal solution would be to have a system that sends a WOL signal to all the PCs it's going to do updates on and then shuts them down when it's done. Another cool thing would be to have the company's access card system linked to the general network. When an employee swipes his card in the morning, the system sends a WOL signal to the employee's PC. Thus, by the time the employee gets to his desk, his/her PC is already turned on.

 

[Moederloos]

I think the ideal solution would be to have a system that sends a WOL signal to all the PCs it's going to do updates on and then shuts them down when it's done.

The problem is Telskum. ADSL bandwidth and so on.

 

[eremos]

Thin clients and VMWare together make a pretty good solution.

Thin clients naturally take less power than standard PCs - Sun Rays for example take about 4 watts of power.

On the server side, VMWare allows you to share wattage among users, as many users are connecting to 1 machine which may only take 3-4 times the power of a standard desktop. Updates only have to be done on however many servers you have, and power cycles can be easily scripted. The new version of VMware even has a (currently experimental) feature that automatically migrates VMs off idle machines and puts the freed servers in standby.

 

[Moederloos]

Thin clients and VMWare together make a pretty good solution.

Thin clients naturally take less power than standard PCs - Sun Rays for example take about 4 watts of power.

On the server side, VMWare allows you to share wattage among users, as many users are connecting to 1 machine which may only take 3-4 times the power of a standard desktop. Updates only have to be done on however many servers you have, and power cycles can be easily scripted. The new version of VMware even has a (currently experimental) feature that automatically migrates VMs off idle machines and puts the freed servers in standby.

Thats a good idea.
On Linux platforms you can have 10 people on one PC - each with own screen, keyboard and mouse.

 

[EtienneK]

VMs... Hmm.. That's actually a good idea. But I think we're still a few years away from migrating all clients to VMs or thin clients. The WOL idea is much more feasible at this very moment in time.

 

[Nod]

Could also use Terminal Server for PA's/TA's, or other people that doesn't need high power workstations. A thin client (maybe Linux using rdesktop, no window manager, just boot up directly into the rdesktop session), could be used to connect. One server to upgrade / patch.

Also could replace Terminal Server with a Linux/Unix solution if you want to save money on software as well.

 

[Moederloos]

Could also use Terminal Server for PA's/TA's, or other people that doesn't need high power workstations. A thin client (maybe Linux using rdesktop, no window manager, just boot up directly into the rdesktop session), could be used to connect. One server to upgrade / patch.

Also could replace Terminal Server with a Linux/Unix solution if you want to save money on software as well.

I have a lekker old PC here that does a network boot onto a linux "server" (the server is actually my own desktop - hehe).
Works fine.

 

[eremos]

Okay, how about this:

1. Configure PCs to automatically download (but not install) updates
2. Tell users to leave their PCs on at night
3. Use some third party app to "install updates and shut down" when the PC has been idle for 30 minutes

WOL is a good thing in theory, but the reality is it's pretty difficult to script something that will start up only if the PC was awakened using WOL. Even going by "if between 8pm and 6am" might not always be correct and may prevent a legitimate user from working as the script keeps cycling the PC.

*a thought occurs*

You could use the same script that performs the WOL to issue the "Install Updates and Shut Down" command to the PC remotely as soon as it boots up. Not sure if it's possible to issue that command remotely, mind.

Edit: Just occurred to me that this falls apart when there aren't any updates to install, and that you weren't keeping this to just Windows updates.

I say best thing is just to have a separate functional update infrastructure (WSUS; central AV management) and leave PCs off or on standby at night.