I’ve been researching power management in SCCM (reporting
and configurations) and came across an interesting problem/resolution that I’d like to share.
In SCCM reports, if you run the Insomnia Report (Reports\Power
Management\Power Management – Insomnia Report) against your main
workstations collection (choose 30 days), you may notice that a high percentage
of your workstations are prevented from sleeping by a process listed as
“rdbss”.
For example in this report 166 devices were found that experienced
this issue in the last 30 days.
At another location we had 50% (~250+) of our workstation and at another barely any (go figure). Investigating this further I discovered that
Windows 7 will by default fail to enter sleep mode if it sees that a network
file is open. This issue has been resolved in Windows 8.
I found a group policy modification to correct this behavior
and allow sleep mode regardless, thus preventing the “rdbss” condition;
After making this modification to our workstations and
rerunning the insomnia report a week later (limited to 7 days) we’re down to
only a handful of computers still suffering from “rdbss”.
With the new group policy setting in place this has resulted
in massive energy savings. As you can see below, running the Energy
Consumption by Day report, we've realized at minimum a 75% decrease in
power usage since implementation. That equates to approximately a $28,000 energy savings per year at one site.
Here's post setting change. This looks much better.
The built in reports in SCCM are priceless.