Power Management and Networks?

ChamaraG asks: "Do you enable power management in your desktop PCs, and have you had any problems with networking after enabling power management (problems like losing open network connections, network using applications hanging after resuming from low power states, etc)? To clarify, by desktop PCs I mean PCs compliant with ACPI and Wake-On-LAN and capable of resuming from low power states in a few seconds, so that waking up time is not an issue. I am interested in the energy efficiency of networks and networked devices and I would like hear of problems that you might have had. Some applications I have tested will disable power management settings, presumably in order to maintain network connectivity. Surveys by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory show that less than 5% of desktop PCs in offices are in low power states at night (36% - off, 60% - on). So, do you enable or disable power management in your PCs? If power management is disabled, what prompted you to do so and what would make you enable power management? What connectivity related problems did you encounter after enabling power management?"

Comments

We don't do it

[akmolloy]

I manage about 500 Workstations, all Dell running XP.

We schedule our WSUS (MS Software update services) to run at night so as not to bother the user. We also run quite a few machines with Deep Freeze, and they require a "Maintainence Mode" in order to unfreeze and apply updates.

My Staff are also becoming addicted to running Remote Desktop, so they won't let us control when the machines are turned off.

Most new staff ask me what they should do with their PC at night, and I always feel guilty when I tell them that it doesn't matter to me, and they might just leave it on. (Even if they turn it off, it auto-ons itself at 4:00 a.m.)