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Comments: 11 +-   Does any company power down at night? on Saturday January 19 2008, @03:06PM Anonymous Coward

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2008, @03:06PM
power
An anonymous reader writes "My Health Sciences Campus has about 8,000 computers on desks, and any night about half of them are left on. I know, because I track all the MAC addresses in case there is a virus outbreak. Aside from the current fad of "being green", has anyone had any success in encouraging users to power-down at night? Eliminate running bots, protect yourself from the next virus outbreak, keep your data safe, etc. My esteemed director's view: "I log off of my PC at night". Or does it matter, security wise, let alone power consumption wise?"
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Does any company power down at night? 11 Comments More /

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  • In order for our business to update computers remotely with new software upgrades, fixes, and billing system data, the computers are left on 24/7 - users are required to log on and off, but turning off power to a pc will cause it to miss such updates during slow business timeframes. For a small office of 2-10 terminals it would most likely be more cost effective to turn them off, but large scale enterprise systems or a college computer lab would prefer to leave them on for 24/7 access. Security is the job
    • How about using wake-on-lan to power the machines up when there's a needed update?
    • and you do not have another possibility like starting up the machines on signal from the network ect?

      I think what it all means is that energy costs are still too low. Have they been higher the machines would go down automagically either after some inactivity time or in harder times still on hard request from admin's room at 18:30 or 14:00 on friday when 'necessary' admin work is to be done (like watching pr0n etc).
      Another thing - I used to work for a company where each an every machine was a unix terminal t
      • That could be one and the same. We're unable to load updates when we log in due to the time involved and the managers want a bigger bonus for more productivity - ie no reason to pay us to wait while the patches go through before we are able to service customers. The wake on LAN option would save money, however the IT department is less than intelligent to change that setting on all the cards (a simple jumper or bios option).
    • Well, if you already have a facility to push out updates to machines at night, how about push out the updates at 19:00, and instruct the machines to shut down once they're fully updated... With the option for a logged on user to cancel the shutdown if necessary.
      And configure the machines to automatically power up again at 08:45 in the morning or something.
  • I work at a university. Just about everyone I know leaves their workstations on. The university sends out power-saving memos recommending that everyone turn off their monitors when not in use, but I don't know if other people follow this. I usually lock the screen and turn off the monitor, but I leave my workstations on to avoid waiting for them to up the next day.
  • I am astounded that people leave workstations on for convenience. Why not just leave the shower on 24/7 so you don't have to warm it up? And the gas grill and the oven, just in case. In fact better leave your car idling 24/7 too.
    • I have booted up to angry e-mails that I should not have turned my computer off at night. I have three computers at my work, and I feel bad enough about having them on during the day... I would be anxious to see offset studies about leaving computers on or turning them off, printing paper vs. extra monitors, etc. I bought REC's when I came to my current company because I was astonished at the lack of energy efficiency.
  • I've got a video edit box where I discovered the hard drive took a few attempts to get running again when I booted up. Sure I could replace the drive, but it was Just Plain Easier(TM) to leave the thing on and constantly spinning.
  • On the server-side, VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 includes new experimental support for powering down unnecessary components in a cluster of hosts, the theory being that for many services you need a lot less resources outside office hours.
  • I work for the Forest Service which is an agency in the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) and we are highly encouraged to power off overnight and when we will not be using the machine for some time to save electricity. However IT likes to push updates on weekends when the increased bandwidth won't adversely affect productivity.

    The instructions lately are to make sure the machine is connected (to the LAN) and to power but nothing is said about being left on. Most of our machines should wake on LAN but it
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