I would LOVE to see the ability to send a WOL option prior to patching… Like, maybe add a “Pre-Action” tab with options such as:
Send WOL prior to patching.
Restart computer prior to patching.
and anything else…
I know another product I demoed had a “Pre-Action” tab that had restart computer prior which is nice as it makes sure no files are open etc… The WOL is the big thing for me though. I want to essentially get to the point where I do all my patching in the wee hours of the morning with no user interruption.
Regarding WOL prior to patching, you can sort of do this by deploying a task using the Wake-on-LAN scheduling wizard. At the last page of the wizard, check “Open the ‘Take Action’ dialog box for advanced scheduling and deployment options” before clicking Finish. Then, go to the execution tab and set the “Starts on” time constraint to around the time that you want the computers to wake up and do work.
I also recommend combining this with a scheduled wake-up, which you can create using the Wake-from-Standby Scheduling wizard. This creates a scheduled task that will wake the machine at a specified time, without Wake-on-LAN. When combined, these two tasks do a fairly good job at waking machines for nighttime patching. However, there’s a few other gotchas in Windows power management, such as PC Narcolepsy, that make things more complicated than they should be.
I
really
wish that the BES Client made the API call to prevent standby while tasks were actively running. It’s a double-edged sword, because you don’t necessarily want every action to prevent standby, but for patching and software deployment it would be a welcome feature. There are plenty of times where our machines have entered standby while a software install or update action was running.
Boyd, thanks for the reply… That “Open the ‘Take Action’ dialog box for advanced scheduling and deployment options” is kind of confusing… I did look at that once before… One question I had with that… Is the “Target” tab irrelevant for this?
Regarding your second paragraph… We don’t use standby at all, all our users either leave them on or shut them down… So, I’m guessing I wouldn’t need to use that? Looking at that wizard though, I wish the WOL was that simple… Looks like it will wake up ALL computers that are in standby and you don’t have to select via subnet etc?
Boyd, thanks for the reply… That “Open the ‘Take Action’ dialog box for advanced scheduling and deployment options” is kind of confusing… I did look at that once before… One question I had with that… Is the “Target” tab irrelevant for this?
I agree! The Wake-on-LAN Scheduling Wizard isn’t very intuitive at all. Your assumption about the target tab is correct. I believe you’re actually supposed to target “All Computers” because the relevance is what determines which computers will execute the task.
Essentially, the wizard generates a task that is sent to machines on the subnet that have reported in recently. The clients that run the task send the WoL packets to offline clients.
tscott
Regarding your second paragraph… We don’t use standby at all, all our users either leave them on or shut them down… So, I’m guessing I wouldn’t need to use that? Looking at that wizard though, I wish the WOL was that simple… Looks like it will wake up ALL computers that are in standby and you don’t have to select via subnet etc?
You’re right, scheduled Wake-from-Standby will not work on machines that are powered off. I incorrectly assumed that your machines were typically in standby. I agree, I wish the interface for WoL Scheduling was similar to Scheduled Wake-from-standby. I’m fairly certain that the developers are giving the power management site a major overhaul… hopefully this has already been addressed in the next version.
By the way, you may be able to schedule a wakeup time in the BIOS of your computers. For example, our Dell Optiplex systems have an “Auto-on Mode” feature, which can power on the computer at a specific time every day of the week (or Monday - Friday). We deploy this setting through BigFix using Dell OMCI and VBScript. If you have Dell systems, I’d be happy to share the script with you.
Essentially, the wizard generates a task that is sent to machines on the subnet that have reported in recently. The clients that run the task send the WoL packets to offline clients.
So the WOL packets aren’t send strictly from the WOL forwarders setup in each subnet? They are basically sent from any client that is on at the time?
boyd
By the way, you may be able to schedule a wakeup time in the BIOS of your computers. For example, our Dell Optiplex systems have an “Auto-on Mode” feature, which can power on the computer at a specific time every day of the week (or Monday - Friday). We deploy this setting through BigFix using Dell OMCI and VBScript. If you have Dell systems, I’d be happy to share the script with you.
We are an HP/Compaq shop, but thanks very much for the offer… I do have one issue regarding the HP BiosConfigUtility if you run any HP at all…
It worked on most my workstations but on about 200 of them it did not… When I run it manually (biosconfigutlity /getconfig) I get what looks like rubbish:
So the WOL packets aren’t send strictly from the WOL forwarders setup in each subnet? They are basically sent from any client that is on at the time?
That’s a good question. I don’t think the Wake-on-LAN scheduler verifies if a computer is a Wake-on-LAN forwarder, but I’m not positive. I think the Wake-on-LAN forwarders are used for the right click -> Send Wake on LAN Request feature. At any rate, we have all of our clients set as Wake-on-LAN forwarders.
Sorry, I’m not sure about that BIOS error. You could try updating the BIOS firmware to see if that helps. Good luck!
This is sort of an off-topic question… But, regarding WOL and traffic… If I “woke up” all the clients on all my subnets via the scheduling wizard (around 1,000 nodes over 60 subnets) would that flood the network? Or how much traffic would that generate?
The next generation power management actually solves some of these issues (although there is not currently a “wake-before-action” option…)
For your question regarding WoL flooding the network, the answer is that it shouldn’t be a problem… WoL traffic is localized to each subnet and so as long as you don’t have huge subnet (only hundreds of computers), then you should be fine… If you do have big subnets, then you will need to pick only a portion of them to be WoL forwarders.
So do you think it would possible to add a wake-before-action? To give you an example of how much work it is without that option I will explain what I just did…
I am rolling out a set of patches to a test group… These test PC’s are across multiple subnets. So, I fired of the WOL Scheduling wizard, had to manually select each subnet that a test PC was a member of, then at the next screen it lists ALL computers in the subnets I selected… I then had to scroll through the massive list to select only my test computers to wake up…
If it was built in, I select the action, select my test computer group, click the “wake up before” action and off I go!
It is hard to do a “wake-before-action” that does WoL because in our system, a pre-action is run on the client itself (which can’t run if it is off or asleep)… But we just had some recent design discussions on our proposed new power management features for the future and I put this feature on the list because of this thread…
Also, regarding the sample that I posted of the process I went through… In that sample, when I created the scheduled WOL, almost all the PC’s were powered on at the time (both the ones I wanted to WOL in the evening and all the others that were just part of the subnets selected)…
When I selected the “Open the take action” dialog to set the parameters (execution time etc) and clicked OK it wouldn’t go through saying I had to select a target… So I just selected “All computers”… When the action ran it looks like 113 computers sent the WOL? I only selected 6 PC’s to actually WOL.
Second question… Say I schedule a WOL for my test PC’s (10 or so)… I then go through and get to the take action dialog… Could I just copy the “Applicability” and the “Action Script” and create a new fixlet titled “Wake Up Test Group” or similar so I wouldn’t have to go through each time and select the same 10 PC’s?
You are pointing out some of the issues in how we do scheduled wake-on-lan in the current version. We have addressed these confusion points and frustrating workflows in our next power management version which is in final testing and due out shortly. I think you will like the new way much better.
Ben, I have the new power management installed… So now for the schedule WOL wizard you just give it a name, set a time, and a frequency and then target the PC’s… I did this last night to test but I don’t think it powered on any PC’s… Are there any logs or anything for me to look at to figure out why? I have a WOL forwarder on almost everyone of my subnets.
On page 51 of the 8.0 admin guide it talks about advanced options. In the screenshot they have “enableWakeOnLAN” to “True”… I do not have that… Is that something that I need to add?
I’m just starting into this topic again. We have clients that use Faronics Deepfreeze and are in a “frozen” state most of the time and/or have some other sites that are religious in shutting down pc’s at the end of the day with scheduled tasks.
I’ll dig in the manuals tomorrow to see if I can issue a wake on lan to pc’s that are applicable in the baseline.
It would be cool to just have a checkbox that can behind the scenes issues a wake on lan from the relay if they are in the same subnet.
