Power management

Summary

The Power Management tool allows you to save money by powering off computers in different rooms across your organisation on a schedule, or even automatically power off computers that are idle for a specified amount of time.

In order to access the Power Management feature, first select the Computer Group that you wish to manage. Then click on the 'Admin' toolbar, and select 'Power management'. This opens a new window.

By default, all the switches are set to 'Off'. You can turn each switch to 'On' by clicking on the 'On/Off' button. As each power management option is switched on, the other fields within that area become active, with each offering different options per feature. 

Power ON

In order for the 'Power ON' feature to work, the remote computers are required to have 'Wake On LAN' enabled in the BIOS, so that magic packets can be sent to the computer in order to power it on. You are required to specify which port to send the Wake On LAN packets to, which is by default port 7.

Once this setting is switched to 'On', click on the 'Schedule' button to set up the times at which the machines in your selected group is powered on.

Power OFF

You can set up this power management feature to shut down remote computers at a certain time, or if the computers have been idle for a certain amount of time.

Note: Do not set a power off schedule against your 'Entire Network' group, as it would shut down your Impero Server if that machine has the Impero Client running.

Once the 'Power OFF' setting is switched to 'On', click on the 'Schedule' button to set up the times at which the machines in your selected group are shut down. There are then a number of additional options you can configure:

Shutdown if user idle for (mins)

You can shut down machines in the group if they have been idle for a certain amount of time. Specify into this field how many minutes of idle time you wish to wait before shutting down computers.

Only shutdown non-logged in machines

Tick this option if you want this power off policy to only take effect on non logged-in machines. Any computer that has a user logged in is not shut down.

Do not allow user to cancel shutdown

Tick this option to prevent users on the remote computer from canceling the powering down of the computers.

Force applications to close

If there are any applications running on the remote computer, this forces them to close prior to the computer shutting down. Any unsaved work is lost.

Do not shutdown if the following applications are running

You can type in the path to a file executable in this text area. If that particular application is running when the shut down policy becomes active, the computer is not shut down.

Turn Monitor OFF / Hibernate / Standby

These three power management features can all be set to activate if the remote computer has been idle for a certain amount of time, by specifying the amount of time in minutes in the available field.

Schedule

All of the power management features can be scheduled to run at specific times by clicking on the 'Schedule' button within the relevant area once it has been switched on. Clicking on the 'Schedule' button opens a new window.

The schedule is broken down by each day of the week; each day has 24 blocks representing each hour of the day. In order to schedule the policy, click on the hours during which you wish for the policy to become active. When an hourly block is clicked upon, the block turns to a solid green color, indicating the policy is enabled for that hour.

You can click as many hours, on as many days as you wish for the policy to run. In the example, the 'Power OFF' policy is set to be scheduled from 17:00 every evening to 07:00 every morning, meaning the computers in the selected Computer Group shuts down at 17:00 every day and cannot be switched back on again until 07:00 in the morning. As the policy is active through Saturday and Sunday, the same applies over the weekend.

If anyone attempts to power on a computer between 17:00 and 07:00, or during the weekend, the machine shuts down again when the Impero Client Service starts.

The computers do not automatically start at 07:00 each day, but a separate ‘Power ON’ policy can be set to turn them on.

You are also able to break down the schedule even further into specific 5 minute blocks. If you click on just one single hour block in the schedule, an additional option is displayed below it. This option comprises of 12 additional blocks, representing 5 minute intervals within the selected hour. Clicking on these blocks puts a green dot inside it, showing that the policy is active for that 5 minute period.

If you have broken down one of the hours into specific smaller time periods, and set that schedule, the hour block within which that time period falls will change into a red dot icon indicating a smaller amount of time than the 60 minutes.

Once you are satisfied with the schedule you created, click on the 'Set' button to activate it. The 'Unset' button removes the schedule. The two additional buttons, 'Set All' and 'Unset All', selects/deselects all the blocks in the schedule.

Hint: You can use the 'Copy Command' to copy one schedule block to multiple other blocks. For example, if you have scheduled a policy to begin at 07:30 on Monday, and wish to set the same schedule to start Tuesday - Friday, simply click on the Monday schedule block, and drag your cursor downwards onto the same block on Tuesday - Friday, then click on 'Set'. Those blocks will then also be populated by the red dot icon as the 07:30 schedule has been copied into them. 

If using a Windows 10 machine, it is advised to set the 'Custom Windows Power Off Type' on 'Hibernate' (right-click on a group>Properties>Group Settings>Workstation Settings).