Powering on Macs Remotely

Not applicable

All,

While I have been working with my PC counterparts at the college, we discussed something I have yet to attempt or know If it can be done on a Mac. This is, powering on a Mac over the local network. Does anyone know if this is possible? This is important especially if updates or images are needing to be sent to labs and there is no one available to turn on the Macs.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks everyone!

Mick

4 REPLIES 4

henkelb
New Contributor III

Short answer is nope. Macs cannot be power up from an off state over the network. They can be woken up from sleep over the network.

Bill Henkel
Computer Technician
Telephone Support Specialist
henkelb at westerntc.edu<mailto:henkelb at westerntc.edu>
608-789-6254
fax: 608-785-9287

Not applicable

As Bill said, you can't remotely turn on a powered down Mac (except for the
later model Xserves), but you can schedule a time when they're automatically
powered on using the Energy Saver preference pane (i.e. weekdays at 7:00
AM).

Brandt

J. Brandt Buckley
Systems Integration Engineer
CRBS

brandt at ncmir.ucsd.edu http://crbs.ucsd.edu
P: +1 858 822 0743 F: +1 858 524 7497

Center for Research in Biological Systems
University of California, San Diego

Holly & Calit2

9500 Gilman Drive
Basic Science Building #1000
La Jolla, CA 92093-0608

Janowski
New Contributor II

I suppose you could use energy saver settings to always turn machines on, say Friday nights at 7pm though.
Then schedule your updates for that night.

As Bill said though, you cannot 'on the fly' remotely power on a mac as needed. Even LOM on our Xserves has been very unreliable typically.

ben janowski
Senior Macintosh Support Technician
Kohl's Mac Support Team
262.703.1396 | benjamin.janowski at kohls.com

ernstcs
Contributor III

It is possible if you're allowed to broadcast across subnets, but that's typically not the case.

Options exist for using other products of course. There are some options in Apple Remote Desktop.

The system we use here I believe has a Mac client now, but haven't deployed it yet, E1 Nightwatchman. It always leaves one computer on per subnet that's used to wake up the rest in the subnet, or specific boxes. If that one box is shutdown, the client is suppose to wake up another box in the subnet first so you always have a controller in that area.

I tell you what though…it sure has been far less of a pain in the ass to not sleep or shutdown Macs for me, I can tell you that much. However, I will likely look at using this client over this summer so we can squeeze out a little more energy savings.

<insert spance of time here>

I've read a few replies since I started typing. It may be the case that a system can't be woken from a powered off state, but I haven't heard that. I know that we hibernate/sleep systems with Nightwatchman, not totally power off.

Craig E