Windows Home Server Power Saving
Published by runtime 360 December 23rd, 2007 in Blog |
I’ve been toying with the idea of moving from a NAS solution to WHS for some time due to the flexibility it offers, and what better way to discover how easy it is to integrate with WHS, than to write an add-in. |
Generally by about 2am everyone in my family is usually asleep; and those with a vested interest in the services offered by WHS (i.e. me) are usually at work until 5-6pm. That’s about 15 hours a day during which WHS consumes approx 55 W idling. Put another way, the cost to run my server 24/7 is over £52 a year; idle time accounts for almost 60% of that.
It seems reasonable to have WHS transition into standby or hibernation around 2am until required at 5pm (weekends excluded); but surprisingly there is no easy way to do this out-of-the-box, so I created a small add-in to do just this.
How it works
The add-in is an MSI package (46KB) that you copy into your Windows Home Server’s Add-In directory; you then use the Windows Home Server Console to install the add-in. A more detailed explanation can be found here.
In addition to the assembly that implements the add-in and a helper application, the package contains a class library (written by Dennis Austin) which facilitates access to the Task Manager. The very light-weight helper application (PollStandby) is executed once every hour and determines whether the system is idle, and whether it is time to put WHS to sleep. Daily, one of seven scheduled tasks is run, ensuring that the system awakes at the appointed time.
Usage
Click on the ‘Settings’ button in the Windows Home Server Console, and then click on ‘Power Saving’. Here you will be able to specify whether your system should transition to standby or hibernation (if you’ve enabled it on your system); additionally you can specify the ‘bed-time’ schedule. The first time you enable ‘Power Saving’, you will need to provide authorization (i.e. username and password) since the Task Manager requires a valid account in order to run the scheduled tasks.
* Update / Note *
Over the course of the afternoon I’ve noticed that WHS likes to wake up of it’s own accord to perform some task at regular intervals, I’ll need to investigate further, so I’ve withdrawn the download link.
6 Responses to “Windows Home Server Power Saving”
- 1 Pingback on Dec 23rd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
- 2 Pingback on Dec 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Chances are if you disable the AutoConfig for the Router detection you may solve this little problem.
The link is not working.
By me the link works.. But the add-inn self is not working.
I see it in mijn homeserver console under settings. but wat ever i try, my home
server will not hibernate or go in standy by modus.
Other wise it would be a super!! Add-inn.
Greets..
I’ve withdrawn the build; I didn’t realise it but it seems that Windows Home Server will automatically wake up periodically. It’s not actually a problem specific to WHS, it’s the behaviour inherent to Windows Server 2003 SBS.
Generally you’d expect a server to stay up 24/7, however in the context of Windows Home Server it’s not necessarily desirable.
In any case I’m working on something better that should circumvent this issue. I’ll post on my blog once I have an update.