Add-In Review: Lights Out

WHS has several add-ins available to automatically manage powering on/off the server.  Lights Out is one of these add-ins.  It monitors and graphs the uptime of the computers in the WHS network.  By installing an included service on the client machines, and with the setting of appropriate options, it can be used to control the power state of the home server itself.  There are several other monitoring and event options that can be set, which I will discuss below.

Installing the add-in is as simple as any other add-in.  Copy the msi installer to your D:Software/Add-ins folder, open the WHS Settings dialog in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.

I did say simple above.  While it is simple to install the base add-in, Lights Out does require a few additional steps to allow it to control the power state of the home server.  The first of which is to disable a feature left over from the Small Business Server 2003 base OS, which WHS is built upon.  This service, SBCore, interferes with the power saving functions of Lights Out.  It is absolutely unnecessary for the operation of WHS.  In order to disable SBCore, there are 2 methods you can use, the easy one and the risky one.  This article explains in detail the process to disable SBCore.  I chose the easy method.  The following picture illustrates how the SBCore Service Properties should appear when disabled.

If all you want to do is monitor networked computer uptime and schedule various events, you are done.  If you wish to use a computer(s) to control the power state of your WHS, you will need to install a service on the client machine(s) that Lights Out will use to control the power state of your WHS.  When you install Lights Out, it creates a folder, illustrated below, that contains this service.  Copy (or use a RDC to execute directly) this file to the computers you wish to control Lights Out and install it.  At this point, Lights Out is almost ready to control the On/Off state of your WHS.

At this point, you will need to access the program.  Open the WHS console and locate the Lights Out tab along the top.  When you click on this item, you will see a window similar to the one below.  A lot of server/client uptime information is displayed on this diagram/chart.  One really has to look closely to get much from this chart.  I only had a few computers on during those times shown on the chart.  I can imagine that the readability of chart would become quite difficult with 11 computers being shown on it.

Along the top of the Lights Out window are several items.  The Refresh buttons “refreshes” the uptime data.  I am not sure if it actually does anything, though, as my chart data seemed to be up to date.

The right button in the middle set brings up the “About” window, as seen below.

The middle button in the middle set brings up the “Settings” window.  Which is where you want to be to make your general program settings.  This window can be accessed from the WHS Settings option, also.

I left most of the settings in their defaults, as I was mostly interested in Client monitoring.  Without changing any BIOS or NIC settings, I proceeded to see what the various power options would do.  As can be seen below, I did not change the default settings for the NIC card.

Proceeding to the tests, what follows are the results.

Test 1: “Do nothing”

The results:

• Shut down the monitored client with WHS still on.
• Wait 10 minutes.  WHS stays on.
• Restart.  Shut down WHS. Shut down the client.
• Wait 10 minutes.  Start workstation.  WHS turns on.

Test 2: “Suspend”

The results:

• Shut down the client with WHS still on.
• Wait 10 minutes.  WHS goes into suspend.
• Restart.  Wait 10 minutes.  WHS stays off.

Test 3: Hibernate

The results:

• Shut down the client with WHS still on.
• Wait 10 minutes.  WHS goes into hibernate.
• Restart.  Wait 10 minutes.  WHS stays off.

Test 4: “Shut down”

The results:

• Shut down the client with WHS still on.
• Wait 10 minutes.  WHS shuts down.
• Restart.  WHS starts up.

You may have noticed some strange or mixed results with my tests.  It seemed to be hit and miss whether this add-in worked the way I had thought it should.  I decided to set my NIC to “Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby”.  And I changed the Lights Out setting to Hibernate.  Big mistake!

The results:

• Shut down the client with WHS still on.
• Wait 10 minutes.  WHS does not shut down.
• Restart.  WHS goes into hibernation! Hitting the power button required user input to start it up correctly.

If I had a headless machine, I would have been in what some have termed an endless boot cycle!  As I had gone this far, I decided that there was one more thing to try.  I went back to my NIC setting and unchecked the “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

The result: Success!  Lights Out now worked the way it was designed to work.

Now that I had the power management settings working, it was time to see what else there was to Lights Out.  One of the options Lights Out has is called Calendar.  Clicking on this item brings up what is shown in the following picture, a calendar.

From here, you can add, edit and delete various uptime events of specific occasions.  Clicking on the Add options brings up the following screen, where you can add events for whatever occasion you desire.

Using the calendar, one can bypass client monitoring and control the uptime for the WHS.  For a single event, or as a daily event.  I did not test to see how well this worked.  I have no doubts that it would based upon the final success rate of the the client monitoring tests.  It is interesting to note that I could “add” an event on a past date.  Perhaps one can go back in time?  Not…

That is about it.  Which is quite a lot!  With Lights Out, one has a very powerful power management tool.  Is it plug-n-play?  No.  Is it for the average consumer?  No. With power comes complexity.  Various configurations can wreak havoc (as I went through above) on a system.  Since Lights Out requires one to disable SBCore, it would be nice if the author included a utility to perform this function.  Or at least detailed instructions vs. the “Search the web for a solution” attitude.  That is not the kind of solution I find acceptable for something that is required to be done.

I did mention a couple of items earlier that I felt needed work.  The Uptime chart is not very readable and needs an overhaul to provide improved readability.  One can add an event to a past date, which should not happen.

And, of course, there should be a troubleshooting section on various hardware parameters that may need to be checked into, if various shutdown options do not work.  For example, the NIC options were the default options set by WHS or least I had never changed them previously.

Program enhancements?  I am still trying to digest everything that Lights Out can do currently! Other than the aforementioned suggestions just discussed, I can not think of any at this time.

Do I recommend Lights Out?  Absolutely, yes!  It requires some work to get everything working correctly, but it is worth it.  What I really like is the ability to simply power up (or down) my workstation and let Lights Out take care of my WHS.  I can now really stick it a closet as I never have to touch it for anything.

Author: Martin Rothschink

Version Reviewed: 0.7.7.122

Release: 11Oct2008

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