Remote Powering

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ayere
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A

Ayere

Not exactly sure which group to post this in...:

I have an XP SP2 PC that I use exclusively for backups. It resides in
another part of the building. We don't want to leave it on all the time, but
it's an annoyance to have to physically turn it on (moving to my office it
is not practical). Is there a way I can remotely kick it on and off? I
thought about allowing it to sleep or hibernate and configuiring the NIC to
wake up for activity, but the security of leaving it offline is the reason
we turn it off.

I know I've just kicked the legs out from under some probable suggestions.
Any ideas?

Thanks,
Ayere
 
Check the hardware documentation, you can power up a pc remotely with
Wake-on-LAN.

John
 
Yes set the NIC to wake on Ring, and leave the pc in standby/hibernate mode
 
John said:
Check the hardware documentation, you can power up a pc remotely with
Wake-on-LAN.

John
Click to expand...

When Wake-on-LAN is enabled, you send a "Magic Packet" from your local
computer. LAN chips come equipped with various options to wake them up,
and some offer better choices than others. In the worst case, if you
don't like how the backup machine LAN chip works, you can buy a PCI
Ethernet card and try it instead.

(Some nice background info to get you started)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_packet

There are two methods for the Wake-on-LAN NIC card to wake the computer.
In the old days, there was a (three wire?) cable, that connected from
the PCI LAN card, to a special motherboard header.

Motherboards with PCI 2.2 compliant (or later) slots, have a signal
called PME in the slot. That signal takes the place of the three wire
cable, and has the added advantage, that any PCI slot can be used to
wake the computer. You check the BIOS, and look for either the word
PME or something to do with PCI wakeup function, and make sure it is
enabled. Wake-on-LAN cannot work, unless the setting in the BIOS
is enabled.

The two methods don't mix. If you have an old motherboard, with the
three pin wake header, you need an older NIC card. If you have a
recent motherboard in the backup machine, you'd want a modern NIC
card with PME on the PCI edge connector.

Using the LAN chip on the motherboard, renders this discussion of
PME a non-issue, at least in terms of the wiring. But if you
simply cannot get reasonable operation from the built-in LAN chip,
is shouldn't cost much to fix it.

The backup machine won't eliminate the need for offsite storage
of backups, and I presume you have a disaster recovery plan for
the business. For example, if the power supply goes crazy and the
12V rail burns all the disks in the backup machine, all your backups
are gone to hardware heaven. Similarly, a fire could take out
your backups as well. There should be more to your plan, than
just that machine.

Paul
 
In addition to the other "Wake on LAN" suggestions, you could configure
the PC to Wake itself up on the BIOS timer and then shut it back off
with Task Scheduler or remotely
 
I'll add that another option is to use an X10 appliance module which has
the advantage of isolating the box from power line surges... in the wake
on lan/ring solutions, the power supply is on and the motherboard is
receiving power albeit not full operating power.

In addition, it's stone simple to impliment ;-) (...although you do
need to have enough smarts to shutdown or hibernate the box before
cutting the power remotely.)

If you use this, you need to set the bios to assure that the machine
will power up after a power failure.

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]
 
Paul said:
When Wake-on-LAN is enabled, you send a "Magic Packet" from your local
computer. LAN chips come equipped with various options to wake them up,
and some offer better choices than others. In the worst case, if you
don't like how the backup machine LAN chip works, you can buy a PCI
Ethernet card and try it instead.

(Some nice background info to get you started)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_packet
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the detailed response, and please forgive the delayed reply. Time
seems to be at great premium these days. I haven't had time to check in to
or implement the information you've provided here, but wanted to get back
before too long and tell you thanks for the time you spent providing all
this detail. A nice start indeed. I do have questions about security and
such, i.e. could someone outside of the network send the 'magic packet' and
access the system or would the router config take care of that (not creating
the allowances in the router set up)?

I would be applying the PCI method, since my mainboard (Asus P4B266)
supplies PCI 2.2. I found one NIC with PME here, but the reviews reveal some
caveats:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124120

Do you know of any reliable card you feel good about recommending? Also, I
assume that the 'PME' card will handle both WOL *and* file transfers (i.e.,
I won't need a separate card for the remote power up)? That being the case,
I would be looking for a gigabit card to connect to my Netgear Gigabit
switch.
The backup machine won't eliminate the need for offsite storage
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree. I have an 2 external drives which I rotate to an off site
location (not nearly often enough...). I also place redundants on multiple
machines in the office.

Again, thanks for your helpful advice!

Ayere
 
Beverly Howard said:
I'll add that another option is to use an X10 appliance module which has
the advantage of isolating the box from power line surges... in the wake
on lan/ring solutions, the power supply is on and the motherboard is
receiving power albeit not full operating power.

In addition, it's stone simple to impliment ;-) (...although you do need
to have enough smarts to shutdown or hibernate the box before cutting the
power remotely.)
Click to expand...


HI Beverly,

Thanks for the response. I google the X10 appliance you suggest, but it
seems as though going to the machine to shut it down before I remotely power
it off sort of defeat the purpose of the 'remote' aspect...

Thanks,
Ayere

If you use this, you need to set the bios to assure that the machine will
power up after a power failure.

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]
Click to expand...
 
Hi Paul,

Thanks for the detailed response, and please forgive the delayed reply.
Time seems to be at great premium these days. I haven't had time to
check in to or implement the information you've provided here, but
wanted to get back before too long and tell you thanks for the time you
spent providing all this detail. A nice start indeed. I do have
questions about security and such, i.e. could someone outside of the
network send the 'magic packet' and access the system or would the
router config take care of that (not creating the allowances in the
router set up)?

I would be applying the PCI method, since my mainboard (Asus P4B266)
supplies PCI 2.2. I found one NIC with PME here, but the reviews reveal
some caveats:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124120

Do you know of any reliable card you feel good about recommending? Also,
I assume that the 'PME' card will handle both WOL *and* file transfers
(i.e., I won't need a separate card for the remote power up)? That being
the case, I would be looking for a gigabit card to connect to my Netgear
Gigabit switch.


Yes, I agree. I have an 2 external drives which I rotate to an off site
location (not nearly often enough...). I also place redundants on
multiple machines in the office.

Again, thanks for your helpful advice!

Ayere
Click to expand...

The problem I have, looking at the Newegg products, is I cannot tell what
chip they use. Otherwise, for the ones that have a datasheet, like an
Intel chip, you could look up what kind of packet detection features
it has got.

Wake on LAN is an additional feature, besides all the standard packet
transferring stuff. So in that sense, any NIC card is a NIC card
first and foremost. There are some NIC cards, that wake up when
*any* packet is received. And that is not the function you are
looking for. (I have a Gigabit Ethernet built into the motherboard
and it uses an Intel chip. I have "Wake on Link" disabled, which would
wake up more than you would want. The WOL function is set to "OS
controlled", so in fact it doesn't say whether it is looking for a
standard Magic Packet or not, but I would presume so.)

I'd take a chance on an Intel NIC card. There is one for $30 which
is Gigabit. Recognize, that a gigabit interface, like the other
speeds, can be run "full duplex". If, in actual fact, both
directions were running full blast, that is more bandwidth than a
PCI slot can handle. The link, as a result, could not run full blast,
but would run at perhaps half speed in each direction. If you are
mainly transferring data in one preferred direction, like doing a
backup, you'll get to use most of the link bandwidth. The PCI
slot might deliver 110-120MB/sec. And there is an assumption about
the OS as well. The machine I'm typing on, uses Win2K, and the
upper limit across Gigabit, is about 40MB/sec. (I've tested that
using two RAM disks as source and sink.) I understand WinXP can do
better in that regard. But at least some backup software is dog-slow
(5MB/sec), so perhaps all this worry about the link speed is not the
real issue.

Paul
 
each of the suggested approaches has it's drawbacks;

wake on lan... setup bios and assure a wake on lan compatible card, plus
the software to send the magic packet

wake on ring... requires dedicated telephone line and will also respond
to wrong numbers

x10 requires manual shutdown or living with with ramifications of power
off with os loaded.

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]
 
Thanks again, Paul, for all the details. You've given me a great start.

Ayere
 
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