Power Management (Shutdown Computers) DS vs NS

[Migration User]

I have been reading around a lot here lately on power management -- more specifically shutting down computers. We are currently running DS 6,9 and NS6 for about 3200 nodes. We would like to shut our machines down at a certain time each evening then just have the BIOS auto power on just turn them on from there. Basically, we'd just like for the computer to report if it's on and if so just shutdown and reschedule for the next day, and if it's not on just schedule again for the next day. I've found some great info on here regarding conditional statements but it still seems that I end up having to manually reschedule every few days just testing at a 100 nodes. I would really like something that's a little more full proof when we scale up our numbers. 

Any input on your environment and methods would be greatly appreciated. 

[Pascal KOTTE]

That's a goog Idea, I would like also ;-)
I was testing a way like this one:
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/fr/blogs/auto-shutdown-after-wakeup-only-computers-was-not-and-not-logged-meantime
Like explain better here also
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/fr/forums/use-managed-software-delivery-shutdown-computers
But some problem, so care.
I will investigate also, thanks to keep us(me) inform what you do.

[Migration User]

After weeks of using the DS with not a lot of success, we turned to the NS using version 6. I didn't seem to see a way that you could do a Power Control and set it to "Run Only at Scheduled Time". Our next choice was just to run a "shutdown -s" command but some of our higher ups wanted to give the users a delay of around 30 mins or so -- there is an option to allow them to defer but it lets the users pick all the way up until 2 weeks. So from there we turned to AutoIT which is honestly about the best thing since sliced bread.

Now we have an AutoIT package set to run a shutdown command, but prompt for a display box asking the user if they would like to delay the shutdown. If they select yes, then the shutdown will be delayed for 30 mins and get the same popup in another 25 mins. If they select no the computer would shutdown as it normally would. We just used a combination of If/then logic as well as a Do/Until statement. Since the package is cached on the local machine we don't have to worry about the machine not talking to the server or anything like that. It has become really handy. Attached is a screenshot.

[Migration User]

I also looking to introduce scheduled shutdowns, though the environment is different NS/CMS 7, I tried to accomplish this in NS 6 originally (no DS) and didn’t find a satisfactory way using the built-in power management tasks.  The NS6 task would run, shutting down PCs but for any PC already off, the task would run at the next time the PC was on, and then shut it down almost immediately.
 
In NS 7 you can set a End Task after x minutes option, when scheduling tasks, in testing this works and the task fails after this time, meaning the PC won’t be inadvertently shutdown outside this schedule.  If the task is set to repeat daily etc, a new iteration of the task is created after this, waiting to run at the next time the schedule kicks in. It looks like you can add a deferral option as well, with a custom message and maximum time to defer (5, 15, 30 minutes & 1, 2, 5 , 12, 18, 24 hours)
 
Don’t know if that helps anyone but I thought I’d mention it, as this seems like a useful facility.

[Migration User]

I don't understand why there isn't an option to run the Power Control feature only at a scheduled time, that forced us to deliver a software package that pretty much did the same thing. We're just about to push this to roughly 3200 machines, so we'll see how things turn out.

How has NS7 has a whole been working out for you? We would like to make the upgrade at some point, but we also use Helpdesk 6 and PXE through DS is a big part of our operations. Until those issues have been worked out/tied in then we're going to stay with CMS6 for a while.

[Migration User]

I have started to implement scheduled shutdowns every night in NS 7, per what I outlined above, which I am gradually rolling out.  This mostly seems to work so far but if any agent isn’t functioning (I have come across a few), it won’t go through or could be misreported.  In general, this is an improvement on NS 6, where you couldn’t timeout the task, so it didn’t run at any other time.

b3tts32, CMS 7.0 has been a somewhat frustrating project, while we have made use some of the new functionality and it’s been relatively well received here with our IT department, it’s been difficult to implement and there are certain aspects of the system I am not keen on.  I have a number of outstanding issues to resolve with Symantec and certain things I could easily do in CMS 6, I just can’t do anymore.

I’d wait and see what’s happening with CMS/SMP 7.1, hopefully with the beta starting soon, things should be a bit clearer, roadmap wise.