I had been managing 5-8 machines manually for a while but now that the number is increasing up to almost 20 machines I would like set them up to turn on at 7am and turn back off at 8pm During that daily session I'd like to schedule some tasks after hours. Am I best to schedule this in the BIOS in auto on/off or would it be best to set it through the router via WOL and then use task scheduler in Windows to run the jobs and turn off the systems? Pretty straight forward, wondering if anyone else has solutions for something similar. Thx.
Since I have retail only accounts does that mean I'm in front of myself? Thx for bumping my thread...
I'd go with the BIOS solution since the alternative would require at the least a router that can have multiple WOL event times. If you don't want the machines to turn on over the weekend then it would have to support a day of week schedule as well.
Why not just leave them on 24 hours? Modern computers dont consume much power or make much noise when idle..
No HVAC over the summer weekends blows the caps on motherboard transistors, uses electricity and the heat kills the hard drives. Each day Task Scheduler runs an antivirus update and quick scan, I'd like the boxes to turn on either Saturday or Sunday, process a full AV update/scan and do a windows update and then shut down. Early in the morning is best so that machines don't get hot in the middle of the day. I have been having trouble with the BIOS on these HP xw8600 machines. For some reason they don't turn on when they say they will (or when we come in the machines have not turned on). Perhaps I'll try a BIOS update or look to the router's WOL scheduler. No issues turning on or off the Dell boxes. The other thing I need to look out for is not turning every machine on at the same time due to power reasons - wish there was a reasonable 3rd party software to accomplish this.
It really depends on the computer configuration and what your definition of "idle" is. If you really mean "on" and not standby then a typical computer with a 450-600w P/S is going to draw around 100w. In the OPs case, with around 20 computers, that would amount to around 2000w. That's going to add up...
don't pay for electric currently so the main issue is heat afterhours. bad for HDD and motherboards/components. Also I want the guys to not touch anything and have it just be on when they come in and off after they leave. No worries and let all the updates/AV magic happen when they aren't around. If I was paying for the electric I'd be much more aggressive and make them turn their machines on each morning and turn them off at 5:30-6:00pm.
If your computers, after powering themselves off, can be powered on by turning the incoming power off then on, an easy way to do this with a customizable schedule is to use a networked power strip (aka switched PDU), such as those from APC.