Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp

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Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp

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Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/8/2008 12:57:18 PM

swood

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Looking to clarify the integration of NightWatchman with SMSWakeup. The NightWatchman Admin's Guide, section 7.1, details how NightWatchman and SMSWakeUp can work together. From what I can see, this simply means that I need to ensure that I've created a program (NightWatchman command line) to run after all my advertisements are finished. There are no 'hooks' between the two programs other than what we explicitly configure, correct?

_____________________________

Sandy Wood
Network Admin
Orange County District Attorney

Post #: 1

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/8/2008 1:11:44 PM

ealdrich

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Not quite, Sandy... If you A) enable the tick box on the WakeUp console on the SMS server to integrate with NightWatchman (paraphrasing the actual option text); and B) set the NWM option PendingSMSJobsWindow=xx on all your NWM clients (where xx is some forward looking window in which NWM will check to see if another SMS job is about to occur- again paraphrasing here), then the two together will work like this:

WakeUp turns on clients to run an SMS job (say SETUP.EXE). NWM will "know" that it was powered up by WakeUp (vs normal user power up); it will see SETUP running as an SMS job... it will also see when it is finished... it will THEN "look ahead" xx minutes to see if the Admin has another SMS job queued up to start within that window. If it sees one, it leaves system powered on to allow next job to start... when the second job is complete, it again looks ahead xx minutes...

eventually it sees nothing else to do within xx minutes, so will then automagically power back down with no other effort needed on the part of the Admin to make it do so.

Does that clear it up?

_____________________________

Ed Aldrich | Solutions Engineer | 1E Inc
Mobile: (401) 924-2293
US/Canada Toll Free: (866) 592 4214
Ed.Aldrich@1e.com | www.1e.com
SMS MVP (2003-2007)
myITforum Advisory Council and Columnist
New England Area SMS User Group Facilitator

(in reply to swood)

Post #: 2

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/8/2008 2:55:22 PM

swood

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Ed,

Thanks for the clarification. This does the job for me. So once I check the box in the SMSWakeUp console, all I'll need to do, at a minimum, is advertise the PendingSMSJobsWindow=xx to all my systems? ( BTW, I don't see the PendingSMSJobsWindow in the alphabetic switch reference in the Admin Guide. Is it a new switch?)

_____________________________

Sandy Wood
Network Admin
Orange County District Attorney

(in reply to ealdrich)

Post #: 3

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/8/2008 5:26:25 PM

ealdrich

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From Admin Guide (latest NWM version):

pendingjobwindowmins
The pendingjobwindowmins value is used to modify the NightWatchman shutdown behaviour according to pending SMS or CM jobs. It takes an integer that defines the number of minutes in the look-ahead window.
The behaviour of this switch depends on the setting for the monitorjobs switch. For NightWatchman to check the pending/running SMS or Configuration Manager jobs the monitorjobs switch must be set to ON, as it is by default.
The way that the shutdown behaviour is modified is dependent on the type of shutdown, as shown in the following table:

and it goes on to explain a lot more detail. This is from v 5.0.11.0

_____________________________

Ed Aldrich | Solutions Engineer | 1E Inc
Mobile: (401) 924-2293
US/Canada Toll Free: (866) 592 4214
Ed.Aldrich@1e.com | www.1e.com
SMS MVP (2003-2007)
myITforum Advisory Council and Columnist
New England Area SMS User Group Facilitator

(in reply to swood)

Post #: 4

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/8/2008 5:39:39 PM

swood

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OK, that makes it real easy. I've installed NightWatchman with the default settings so at this point I shouldn't have to make any changes on the client-side to enable the Config Mgr / SMSWakeUp integration.

Thanks! I think I'm good to go!

_____________________________

Sandy Wood
Network Admin
Orange County District Attorney

(in reply to ealdrich)

Post #: 5

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/8/2008 7:52:30 PM

pfreestun

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One more thing to add about the timing of the shutdown attempts.
At the SHUTDOWNTIME NightWatchman will check for currently running packages and for any Advertised Packages due to execute within the PENDINGSMSJOBWINDOW time.
If such a job exists then that shutdown attempt will be cancelled. NightWatchman will then wait for RETRYINTERVAL minutes before making another attempt to shutdown the machine as above.
The shutdown attempt will be made for the number of times set under RETRYATTEMPTS at the expiration of which the shutdown will be cancelled.

Thus, in a default install, the RETRYINTERVAL=60 and RETRYATTEMPTS=3.
So, if NightWatchman on this machine is set to shutdown at 12am, shutdown will be attempted at 12am and then retried at 1am, 2am and 3am after which that shutdown will be cancelled.

(in reply to swood)

Post #: 6

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/8/2008 11:43:04 PM

ealdrich

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...but by DEFAULT this interaqctive behavior is not ON as I understand it... that's whay Sandy will need to modify the installed NWM agents to set the pending jobs window interval, no?

_____________________________

Ed Aldrich | Solutions Engineer | 1E Inc
Mobile: (401) 924-2293
US/Canada Toll Free: (866) 592 4214
Ed.Aldrich@1e.com | www.1e.com
SMS MVP (2003-2007)
myITforum Advisory Council and Columnist
New England Area SMS User Group Facilitator

(in reply to pfreestun)

Post #: 7

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/9/2008 12:06:30 AM

pfreestun

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Default installation is
MONITORJOBS=ON and
PENDINGJOBWINDOWMINS=5

I should also add that the retry behaviour descibed above only happens for scheduled shutdowns. For a SHUTDOWNNOW command the shutdown attempt is made once only with no retry.

(in reply to ealdrich)

Post #: 8

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/9/2008 10:45:51 AM

swood

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What would you define "scheduled" shutdowns as?

_____________________________

Sandy Wood
Network Admin
Orange County District Attorney

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Post #: 9

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/9/2008 1:04:28 PM

swood

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Well, I found the explanation of Shutdown Types in the NW Admin guide but it still leaves me wondering just what the difference is between Shutdown Now and Scheduled Shutdown.

They both check for pending jobs, as well as currently running jobs. If either of these exist, they both check the state of the corresponding Advertised Program. At this point the explanations diverge - Shutdown now "aborts the shutdown if appropriate" (what's "appropriate"?). Scheduled Shutdown "the shutdown attempt is deferred".

It would seem that, using Config Mgr and SMSWakeUp, the Scheduled Shutdown would be the one to use. How doe NW decide which Shutdown Type to use?

_____________________________

Sandy Wood
Network Admin
Orange County District Attorney

(in reply to pfreestun)

Post #: 10

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/9/2008 8:12:22 PM

pfreestun

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No problem:-

A scheduled shutdown is when you have SHUTDOWNTIME=xx:xx set. NightWatchman is scheduled to shut down the machine at xx:xx on SHUTDOWNDAYS (all days by default)

The SHUTDOWNNOW command is just that - the command used to kick off NightWatchman to perform an immediate shutdown.

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Post #: 11

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/10/2008 10:15:29 AM

swood

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So lets say I've installed NW with the defaults. Now I create an advertisment in Config Mgr and configure it to Wake On Lan. What type of shutdown happens after the Config Mgr advert runs?

_____________________________

Sandy Wood
Network Admin
Orange County District Attorney

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Post #: 12

RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/10/2008 6:58:45 PM

pfreestun

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NightWatchman will return the machine to the state from which it was woken. Powered Down - Powered Down, Standby - Standby

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RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/11/2008 9:08:06 AM

fracine

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What if you don't want NWM shutdown the computer this time or on specific advertisements?

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RE: Nightwatchman integration with SMSWakeUp - 4/13/2008 6:17:07 PM

pfreestun

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If you wish to disable this behaviour for a specific advertisement then you cal include the string:-

NoAutoShutdown

in the Advertisment name or Advertisement comment.

(in reply to fracine)

Post #: 15