eiPower Saver Solution in the Cloud

eiPower Solution solution is now available in the cloud. By that I mean that eiPower is available as hosted software and as a full SaaS offering. These offerings reduce the setup time and costs associated with deploying eiPower into a new environment. These services are great for small to medium sized organisations that may not have the IT resources to implement new software solutions in house.

To start using eiPower all that is required is to deploy the eiPower Saver Agent to your desktop computers using a simple command line. Installation is typically done using a an AD group policy or log-in script.

The eiPower Saver Agent running on desktop computers communicates to a server hosted in the cloud, currently Microsoft Azure, using standard web communication protocols (HTTP over port 80). This means that no network or firewall setup is required to use eiPower. Additionally the amount data communicated between the client and server is very low (much lower than the traffic generated by the desktop users browsing even a single website) and so network infrastructure will not be impacted by running the eiPower Saver Agent.


 

eiPower Saver Solution for Cisco EnergyWise

eiPower Saver for EnergyWise Devices makes the power management functionality of the eiPower Saver Solution for PCs product to any PoE or EnergyWise enabled devices.

This solution allows the monitoring and reporting of power usage, cost and CO2 emission information across an organisation, as well as the intelligent control of the device's power state through the use of power policies. Using eiPower Saver for EnergyWise Devices organisations are able to reduce power usage and cost in their environment while minimising any negative impact on the business. In particular, additional functionality for the power management of user's IP phones is provided to ensure that power savings measures do not impact the ability for users to perform their jobs.

eiPower Saver for EnergyWise Devices uses the widely adopted Cisco EnergyWise technology to monitor and manage any EnergyWise enabled or PoE powered device.

Features

• Monitor and report on energy usage across an organisation's EnergyWise domains
• Discover, identify, categorise and group all EnergyWise devices in an organisation
• Ability to control the power state for any EnergyWise enabled or PoE device
• Ability to define policies to control scheduled wakeup, shutdown, standby and hibernate of devices.
• Ability to target different power control policies to different sets of devices based on type, location and role
• Allows users to remotely wake their own devices (e.g. IP Phone)
• UI on client PCs allows users to the override power control schedules for their Phone in order keep it powered after normal business hours. Alternatively user is able to access this functionality can be access from a website if you do not wish to rollout an agent to client PC
• Ability to link a user's computer and phone together so that power state can be managed together.
• Ability to establish a baseline of energy usage so that energy savings can be calculated
• Support for complex power pricing structures including : - Time of day/week (e.g. peak/off-peak)
   - Location 
   - Seasonal
• A rich set of reports

eiPower Saver Solution for Microsoft SCCM Released

We are pleased to announce that eiPower Saver Solution is now available on Microsoft's System Centre Configuration Manager. This means that organisations using SCCM can now use eiPower to save energy, money and CO2 emissions in the same way that organisations with Symantec's Management Platform has been able to.

Power Modelling Report in Perth

Below is an example of the updated Power Modelling Report in the Perth release of eiPower Saver Solution (server version 7.2.1500).

The Power Modelling Report allows you to test the reductions in Energy Usage, Cost and CO2 Emissions that would be achieved by implementing a power scheme on the computers in your organization. 

The Power Modelling Report uses the Baseline Power Events and Inactivity Events data to calculate the reductions that would be achieved without having to apply power scheme changes to computers in your environment.

Perth version of eiPower is released

The Perth version of eiPower is released and should be available for download from the SIM in a few days.

This version of eiPower has a number of updated and improved reports which allow organisations to clearly see the power savings that have been achieved through eiPower saver Solution. 
 
A sample of these new reports are shown below. These reports are taken from a real implementation of eiPower (i.e. this is not sample data) in an organisation that has successfully implemented eiPower on over 6000 computers.

The Monthly Savings report shows the savings of Energy, Cost and CO2 Emissions by month compared to the Baseline

This comparison graph shows the daily savings of Energy, Cost and CO2 Emissions during the Baseline period vs a Comparison period. The average savings per computer per year in show.

The Proof of Concept report shows the reduction in power usage that has been achieved by applying power policies on a sample group of computers. The savings that would be achieved by applying eiPower to all 10,000 computers in also shown.

This report shows the power usage for a 7 day period during the baseline period. The weekday power usage peeks can be clearly seen in this graph.

This report shows the total power usage for the same group of computer after power policies have been applied. The overall reduction in power usage can be clearly seen in this graph. The daily peeks in power usage and the overnight and weekend drops in power usage can be clearly seen in this graph.

Error with Microsoft Office when computer wakes from standby/sleep

Some organisations report problems with MS Office when using network shares after a computer wakes from standby. 

The problem appears to be that after the computer wakes from standby, MS Office attempts to access the network share before Windows has had time to properly reconnect it. The causes MS Office to show an error to the user.

The following KB article provides a good description of this problem and their suggested solution.

KB 2434898 : Word cannot establish a network connection error after you resume a computer from standby in Office Word 2007

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2434898

 

Power Event Purging

One of the features of the Symantec Management Platform is that it prevents excessive table size in the CMDB by automatically purging old events in Event Data Classes. While generally this is fine it can sometimes cause problems for eiPower Saver Solution when the PowerEvents data gets purged. 

Since the SMP purges the oldest data first the Power Events that form the baseline will get typically get removed first. The baseline power event data is used in the comparison reports and is necessary to calculate energy savings. 

In order to prevent this data from being purged it is necessary to change the default purge settings in the SMP console. These purge settings are found at the following location :
In the console menu select Settings -> All Settings.
Then navigate to Settings -> Notification Server -> Purging Maintenance
Click the Resource Event Data Purge Settings tab

Use the link under Custom to select the PowerEvents data class located under Data Classes -> eiPower Saver as shown in the screenshot below.

Specify a value for the Event data retention period that will ensure data is not purged while it is still needed.

A Max rows value of 100,000,000 is recommended for environments over 10,000 computers.

The Perth release of eiPower Saver Solution moves the baseline power events to a separate table so that it does not get purged by the SMP. This ensures that the baseline data will always be available to run comparison reports even if other power event data is getting purged by the SMP.

eiPower Saver Agent Diagnostics Windows (again)

A useful way to examine and understand the operation of the eiPower Saver agent is to use the Agent Diagnostics window  to look at the operation of the agent in real time.

The Agent Diagnostics window is not shown by default and must be enabled by setting a registry key as follows :

32 bit computer :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Enterprise Infrastructure Partners\eiPower Saver Agent

64 bit computer :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Enterprise Infrastructure Partners\eiPower Saver Agent

Under this registry key create a new String value

Name : Diagnostics

Value : 1

Note : The above instructions apply to post Dublin builds only. Refer to previous post on enabling Diagnostics in pre-Dublin agent builds

When this registry key is set you can right click on the eiPower agent icon in the Systray and you will see the Diagnostics Information entry shown below.

Diagnostics Menu Item shown after clicking on eiPower Saver Agent Sys-tray icon

When the Diagnostics Information entry is clicked the Diagnostics Windows will appear as shown below :

eiPower Saver Agent Dianostics Window

Check the Auto Refresh' checkbox to make the data update automatically every 5 seconds.

The diagnostics window contains a large amount of information about the operation of the eiPower Saver Agent including the following :

• The time when the agent detected the computer last woke from Standby/Hibernate 
• The Current Idle Timer and Forced Standby/Hibernate countdowns - these are used by the insomnia detection feature
• If the Offsite Detection feature is enable then the Diagnostics windows will show the network adaptor information that the Agent uses to determine if the computer is Off/On site
• The log of unsent Power Events
• If Inactivity monitoring is enable then the log of unsent Inactivity Events will be shown
• Shows the computers current power scheme
• Shows the list of all power policies including the currently active policy

 When a problem or unexpected behavior is encountented with the eiPower agent it can bevery useful to use the Diagnostics window to help understand the operation of the agent.

Computers with Missing or Overlapping Power Events Report

The purpose of this report is to help identify problems with the Power Events data reported from the eiPower agent. Many of the energy usage reports in eiPower Saver Solution make use of the power events data and hence it is important to ensure that this data is being collected correctly.

In normal operation every computer with the eiPower agent install will generate a continuous set of power events starting from the date that the agent was installed. That is, the agent will send a set of power events where the Start date of each event will be equal to the End date of the previous power event. This ensures that we know the power state of the computer and monitor at all times. These events should cover all periods of normal operation of the client computer - including periods where the computer is shutdown normally.

More information about eiPower event data can be found here http://eipower.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/eipower-saver-power-events-explained.html

The Computers with Missing or Overlapping Power Events report calculates the summed duration of all power events for each computer, and compares this value with the expected duration of the power events for each computer.
 
For example : If we specify the following parameters;

• Start Date : 1st Aug 2012
• End Date : 5th Aug 2012
• Period Breakdown : Totals

Then we would expect there to be 4 days = 5760 minutes of power events for each computer.

The report will list any computer who's summed power events duration is great or less than 5760.
 
The Breakdown parameter can be used to group the power events by days, mouths or years. This allows you to identify more accurately the period where there is a problem.

Gaps in the Power Events

Where the summed power events duration is less than the expected duration we have gaps in the power events data. This means that one or more of the power events are missing and hence we have a period where we do not know the power state of the computer. There are many reasons that this can happen including (but not limited to) :

• The client computer has been turned off for an extended period, e.g. user is on holiday and has not had a chance to send new data.
• The client computer no longer exists, i.e. it has been disposed of.
• The client computer does not have the eiPower agent installed.
• The eiPower agent service on the client computer has been stopped.
• The client computer has its time set incorrectly and hence is reporting the wrong event time 
• The client computer was unexpectedly shut down, e.g. due to power outage. 
• The Symantec agent on the client computer is failing to communicate with the SMP server There is a licensing problem on the SMP server 
• An error occurred loading the data on the SMP server, e.g. database failure.

The report is unable to determine the cause of the gaps in the data, it is only able to list those computers that have a gap. It is necessary to use of means to determine the cause of the gaps.
 
While ideally each computer will have no gaps, and hence not appear in the report, small gaps in the data are not a problem. Any computer with >80% of the expected event data has sufficient data to run the Energy usage reports and hence we don't need to worry about these small gaps.

Where we see computers with Summed Events Duration = 0 (that is; the computer has no power event data between the Start and End dates) this typically indicates one of the following :

• The computer no longer exists (had been disposed of) but has not been deleted from the SMP.
• The Symantec agent is not installed on the computer.
• The Symantec agent is not communicating with the SMP. (check the Last Basic Inventory column)
• The eiPower agent is not installed.

Duplicate/Overlapping Power Events

Where the summed power events duration is greater than the expected duration we have duplicate or overlapping power events data. This can be caused by the following :

• The client computers has the same Guid as another computer (duplicate computer record) 
• The time on the client computer has been changed. 
• Power events from the client have been loaded by SMP multiple times.

Again the report is unable to determine the cause of problem it is only able to list those computers that have a problem.

New Feature - Offsite Power Policies

In the upcoming Perth release of eiPower a significant new feature is the ability for the end user to specify a power policy that will be applied when their computer is Offsite. This feature will be available to the user through a UI on the agent after the administrator has configured and enabled the Offsite Detection policy in the SMP console. The agent UI allows the end user to specify the power scheme settings (Monitor off, HDD off Standby, Hibernate times) that will be applied when computer is Offsite. 

When the eiPower agent detects that the computer is OFF-site it will automatically apply this Offsite power scheme and when the agent detects that the computer in ON-site it will automatically apply the standard power policy.

In a previous post (New feature in Tokyo release - New Power Policies) I discussed the different types of power policies that the eiPower agent uses, as well as the priority order in which these apply. With this new feature there is now another type of power policy that the agent uses. The full list of power policy types is shown below with the new policy type is shown in bold.

1. Complete Override Power Policy. This power scheme gets created when the user has set the override. It gets deleted automatically when the override countdown timer reaches zero or the when user turns off the override by clicking the Resume button.
2. Offsite Power Policy. When Offsite detection has been configured by the administrator the eiPower agent allows the user to define an Offsite power policy. This policy gets automatically applied when the computer is Offsite.
3. Application Power Policy. These power schemes get activated when the specified application is running or website is open.
4. Scheduled Power Policy. These power schemes become active when the current time is between the Start and End date.
5. Users Override Default Power Policy. This power scheme gets created when a user chooses to modify the default policy specified by the administrator.
6. Administrators Default Power Policy. This is the default power scheme defined by the administrator.

These types are listed in order of their priority. Hence these policies are applied in the following way.

• If a Complete Override Policy has been set this will take precedent over all other policy types. During this time all other policies are ignored, for example, the Offsite power policy is ignored even if the computer is Offsite and all scheduled power policy End Actions will not execute at their scheduled time 
• If the Complete Override Policy is NOT set and Offsite detection has been configured by the administrator AND the user has specified an Offsite power scheme AND the computer is Offsite, then the Offsite Power Policy will be applied. During this all other lower priority policies are ignored.
• If none of the previous policies are active and any application is running (or web page is open) that has been specified in an Application Power Policy then this policy will be applied. As usual any lower priority policy is ignored while the Application Power policy is active.
• If none of the previous policies are active and the current time is between the Start and End times for a Scheduled Power Policy then this policy will be applied. If specified the computer will be woken at the Start time and the End Action will be executed at the End Time. During this time all lower priority policies are enabled.
• If none of the previous policies are active and the user has specified a Default Override Power Policy then this scheme will be applied.
• If none of the previous policies are active then the Administrators Default Power Policy will be applied. This is the default scheme for the agent.

An additional change to the agent in the Perth release is that all wake-up timers will be disabled when the Complete Override Power Policy is set or when the computer is Offsite. This means that when the computer is Offsite the computer will not be woken for scheduled power policies or for SWD/Patch integration schedules. 

Note. Wakeup timers are disabled whenever the computer is Offsite regardless of if an Offsite power policy has been enabled or not.