Introducing NightWatchman Enterprise 7.3
NightWatchman Enterprise provides these benefits to your organization:
Centralized computer power management and reporting that allows you to minimize computer power usage and environmental impact throughout your entire organization
Extremely scalable and reliable wake-on-LAN
Features to enhance security in your organization:
Expedited security updates
Safe reboots
Data to optimize your reboot strategy
Reclaim unattended computers
Live status of your computers.
Reports to optimize battery-enabled devices
Identify unused and rarely used computers so you can reclaim them for other uses and they will no longer waste power.
If you want to know about the changes in the latest versions of NightWatchman Enterprise, see the Releases section. That section also has quick start guides so that you can quickly use NightWatchman before deploying it to production.
NightWatchman Enterprise features
The NightWatchman components provide the business benefits by enabling these NightWatchman Enterprise features:
Power management applies power-related policies to clients, collects power-related data, and accurately reports on the results
Computers can be aggressively but safely shut down to maximize savings and to minimize your organization's environmental impact. Safe shutdowns save any unsaved data users might have been working on and prompts them when the computer is rebooted to restore the unsaved data or restore to the previous best version
The safe shutdown solution also allows for safe reboots, ensure that security changes (such as patches) are effective as soon as possible
WakeUp ensures that client computers are woken from low-power states as needed for software deployments, maintenance, daytime work, Nomad content distributions, and on-demand administrator and end-user requests
Your organization's security is enhanced by waking computers for security-related activities (such as patching) when needed. The user impact can be minimized by doing so after-hours
Computer Reclaim identifies computers that have had no or little keyboard or mouse use for extended periods (typically weeks)
Such computers can be reclaimed so that they can be provided to new or other users, rather than purchasing new computers
Such unmonitored computers are also no longer security risks
Power Optimization allows you to understand how well your battery-enabled devices are working and which require attention
Modern Windows devices commonly have smartphone-like features that can maximize user productivity. NightWatchman uniquely reports on those features so that you can ensure they're working as expected
Reboot Optimization allows you to understand how your computers are being rebooted, or not
Are the computers being rebooted when they should? Is excessive reboot activity occurring? Are the users having a good reboot experience?
Tachyon integration allows you to have live status updates on WakeUp and other time-sensitive NightWatchman activities
NightWatchman Enterprise components
The NightWatchman features except WakeUp use the NightWatchman components. WakeUp can be used completely without the NightWatchman components but in that case status reports and Nomad integration will not be available.
NightWatchman Management Center – the server-side control center consisting of:
NightWatchman Console – used to create and modify the NightWatchman hierarchies, create and modify power schemes, create and modify power policies, apply power schemes and power policies to computers in NightWatchman group hierarchies, define and modify NightWatchman hardware power consumption data, define NightWatchman Console security, and create and apply tariffs.
Database – holds all power policies and configuration settings from the NightWatchman console as well as data from the WakeUp agents and NightWatchman clients for reporting. The database name is AgilityFrameworkReporting.
NightWatchman Reporting console (ReportConsole web site) – reports for all the features.
The AFWebService web site – collects data from the 1E agents and WakeUp server.
Import Wizard – used to automatically assign discovered computers to groups used in the console and reports, for power consumption accuracy, and for policy targeting.
1E NightWatchman Console service – handles communications between the console and the database and is responsible for triggering wake ups.
1E NightWatchman agent – has two components:
NightWatchman – retrieves data on the device's power consumption. Work in conjunction with NightWatchman Management Center to implement power policies from a central location. Puts the computer in standby or logs-off the user and powers-off the device. You can wrap these actions as a scheduled activity and include additional actions depending on whether a user is logged on and what type of software they are running. It works on Windows and Mac platforms.
An optional system tray icon allows users to interact with NightWatchman functionality.
1E WakeUp agent as part of the 1E Client – communicates with the WakeUp server and provides local re-distribution of wake up signals. It reports statistics about the wakeup to the NightWatchman Management center. It works on Windows platforms only and can be configured to work with network access controlled networks
WakeUp server – manages wake-ups for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager deployments, the NightWatchman or ConfigMgr consoles, or requests from end-users via Web WakeUp
WakeUp also has a console. This console is used for WakeUp-specific settings and to monitor WakeUp activities
The ConfigMgr console can be extended to include menu options so that administrators can wake computers on demand.
Web WakeUp (WebWakeUp web site) – An end-user interface to WakeUp
Tachyon - if you integrate NightWatchman Enterprise with Tachyon, you can watch live WakeUp activity for all your clients in the NightWatchman console
ActiveEfficiency server – if you integrate NightWatchman Enterprise with ActiveEfficiency, you can use integration with Nomad to wake peer computers when cached content is needed but not available on other peers on the subnet.