Independent School Educators' List (ISED-L): Re: Policy for Powering Off Computers

I think one other issue might be VPN connections. Several of my =
administrators access from home at varying times (including weekends and =
in the middle of the night). I guess these computers would just need to =
stay on.

Renee Ramig
Seven Hills School

-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators on behalf of TJ Rainsford
Sent: Wed 12/9/2009 5:06 AM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Policy for Powering Off Computers
=20
Matthew has an interesting idea that my organization has been looking
at leveraging. Most modern network interface cards have the "wake on
LAN" feature that allows administrators to turn a machine on or off.
There are three issues with this approach:

1. Each NIC manufacturer implements Wake on LAN a little differently
so making this work requires a bit of up front testing. All the more
reason to standardize equipment!

2. Having some sort of management system in place is pretty vital to
making this work. You need some automated way of waking the machines,
deploying patches, then shutting the machines back down again. These
products certainly exists (Kaseya, SAAZ, Altiris, etc) but are often
cost prohibitive unless you have a managed services provider that
supplies the software as part of a support agreement.

3. This really only works effectively on WIRED connections. So if you
run a primarily wireless network, this may be more trouble than its
worth.

I am all for greening IT where it is feasible but to my mind, security
and reliability trumps power savings. It is far more critical to keep
equipment fully patched than trying to lower the carbon footprint by
shutting equipment down. I would be more concerned with reducing
power consumption at the server level through virtualization.

And along those lines, one potential way of dealing with this issue is
through virtualizing the desktop but this requires a lot of planning,
upgrades (especially at the communications and server level) and
testing....but I do believe that this is the future of enterprise
networks.

On 12/8/09, Matthew Datcher <mdatcher@designdata.com> wrote:
> Would it be possible to use the wake-on-LAN features built into most
> network adapters to restart the workstations for updates and other
> activities? I may be dating myself, but I remember back in the old =
days
> of Novell ZENworks setting up policies to start the workstations, =
image
> them, and then shut them back down in the middle of the night,
> unattended. Has anyone tried something like this today? Thanks,
>
> -Matthew
>
> ___________________________________________
> Matthew Datcher
> Senior Network Engineer
> CCDP, CCNP, CCSP, MCNE, MCSE
> designDATA
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> Gaithersburg, MD 20879
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> mdatcher@designdata.com
> Technology Consultants & Network Engineers
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: A forum for independent school educators
> [mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Kathy Moore
> Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 3:55 PM
> To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> Subject: Policy for Powering Off Computers
>
> Our school's policy for shutting down computers is to leave the
> computers on from Monday through Thursday (turn monitors off) and shut
> down on Friday at end of the day and extended holidays. Thus the
> computers stay powered on overnight (but logged off) during the week =
so
> that we can run scheduled tasks such as updates and scans during the
> users' down time.
>
> How do you handle the ability to be good stewards of users' productive
> time and be good stewards of power consumption?
>
> Kathy D. Moore
> Director of Technology
> All Saints Episcopal School
> 2695 SSW Loop 323
> Tyler, TX 75701
> 903.579.6000 x1208
>
>
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