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By Pete Zerger on 7/6/2010 5:45:21 AM • Rank (3731) • Views 3909
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I've long though wake-on-LAN would be a useful addition to the list of tasks in the System Center Essentials console and the request came up in the forums recently. Here's a simple way to provide integrated wake-on-LAN task in Essentials 2010 with a very simple management pack, which consists of a single view and single task targeted to the 'Network Device (Client)' class.

WOL View

The view is simply a State View targeted to the 'Network Device (Client)' so you can easily select and run the task for the client computer of your choice. The Path column in the console presents the PC to which the network adapter belongs.

image

WAKE UP System Task

The WAKE UP System Task uses the free wake-on-LAN command line tool (wolcmd.exe) from Depicus.com which can be downloaded at http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/wake-on-lan-cmd.aspx 

The WAKE UP System Task passes the appropriate network adapter values to the wolcmd task (mac, IP, subnet) using the standard XPath variables).

SYNTAX: wolcmd [mac address] [ip address] [subnet mask] [port number]

Required Configuration

The following are the required configuration elements: 

  • It assumes the free Depicus wolcmd.exe has been extracted to c:\tools\ directory on the computer where you are running the Essentials console
  • Client computers have a single IPv4 address and IPv6 should be disabled (see known issues below). (This varies by manufacturer)
  • SCC Wake-on-LAN Mgmt Pack has been imported into your Essentials 2010 management group

Known Issues
Due to the way the IP addresses are stored on the Network Adapter class, this task will only work for client network adapters with a single IPv4 address. This means IPv6 should be disabled on the client network adapters in your environment. This should be easy enough for DHCP clients in most environments today. You may have to disable IPv6 on Windows 7 computers...not a big deal if you're not using IPv6 anyway.

Enabling Wake-on-LAN

This varies by manufacturer. For example, Dell makes a utility you can use to enable wake-on-LAN on your Dell desktop and laptop computers through a msi package created with the Dell Client Configuration Utility (DCCU).

Check with your manufacturer for instructions on how to enable wake-on-LAN for your client systems.

Questions and Feedback

If you have questions or feedback, post a question in the Essentials support forum here at SCC or post a comment for this MP download in the catalog.

Comments (1) - Comment RSS
Mike Resseler wrote: on Jul 22, 2010 03:22 AM
Hey Pete,

Nice Management Pack.

The Known Issues however is a problem for me. For the moment I solved this by using 255.255.255.255 and 255.255.255.255 as direct parameters for the IP address and Subnet Mask which works for the environment I use it. But I was wondering if there would be a way that I could say that only the data before the virgil from a property field could be used. That way I would only have the IP4 and the IP6 would be ignored.



Another way would be that I could change the '-' in the MACAddress property by ':' and then I could use another free program that only needs the MAC Address to send the WOL packet



Cheers



Mike Resseler


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