Scheduled Computer Power-ON

[Dale Goodell]

I received three replies to my question of two days ago.  Thank you to everyone who responded -- this is a great list!

One suggested (and included -- thanks) a program called Remote Shut Down.  Another reply asked why we want to shut things down in the first place, and another asked for information about my configuration of Deep Freeze to schedule shutdowns.

The power-off scheduling is for energy conservation, as recommended by the University administration and the State of Oregon.

For the power-on system, we have decided to explore Ghost's capabilities.  We are in the process of configuring Ghost to allow for scheduled re-builds of the machines on a regular basis, and we decided that it would be best to try to take advantage of Ghost's built-in capabilities for Wake-On-LAN.  We may, in fact, configure Ghost for scheduled shut-downs as well, as this would keep everything under one program to streamline our management.

Here is how I configured Deep Freeze, for anyone who's interested.

Within the Deep Freeze Pro administration program, simply go into the  "reboot/shutdown" tab near the bottom of the program.  There you can configure your power-off settings for each weekday.  I also went into the "maintenance" tab to configure a maintenance schedule, where the C: drive is thawed.  This allows for updates of Norton virus definitions.  For most of our machines, I have them set to go into maintenance (thawed) mode starting at 12:30 am and stopping (re-freezing) at 1:50 am, then set to power-off at 2:00 am.  




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Dale E. Goodell
Information Technology Consultant
Hamersly Library -- Western Oregon University
345 N. Monmouth Avenue
Monmouth, OR 97361

Voice:   503-838-8891
Fax:     503-838-8399
E-mail:  goodeld at wou.edu
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