AWS Thinkbox Discussion Forums

Power Management, WOL, Windows 10 startup issues

Hello

I’ve been trying out the free version of Deadline in our Studio, and have been in contact with sales, for a possible purchase, and right now I’m running the 30 day trial. But I’m having issues with Power Management.
I have already been in contact with support about this issue, however they didn’t really solve it for me, so I’m trying here, incase anyone would know what’s going on.

I have 2 workstations with Windows 10 and a normal installation of the Client with Launcher and Worker, ie. NOT installed as a service.
My own machine is running the Monitor. Our License Server is running Pulse. I have the Repository on our remote server, and the Database on a remote machine in the same Data-warehouse as our server.
The system seems to be running fine, as I can submit jobs from my machine, and have the 2 Workers render them.

I have WOL up and running, and have manged to get Power Management to work.
BUT my issue is, once Deadline or Power Management has shut down the machines for the first time, then the next time the system manages to start the machines via WOL, but they somehow fail to start up the Launcher or the Worker, or anything else for that matter.
If I then go the workstations and manually login, I can see windows starting all programs including the Launcher and the Worker.

If I turn off Power Management, so that Deadline doesn’t shut down the machines, but I then shut them down manually, I can consistently turn them on via the Monitor or the Power Management and they behave as normal, where they start up to the login screen, but starts the Launcher and the Worker in the background.
The same thing happens when I restart or shut down the machines manually, they always startup to the login screen, and have the programs start in the background.

To summarize. When I restart or shutdown + power on the machines manaully via mouse and keyboard in windows, the Launcher and Worker start up perfectly in the background, and the machines display the login screen.
Also if I shut down the machines manually, Deadline can power them up via WOL, and the Launcher and Worker start up perfectly in the background, and the machines display the login screen.

But whenever I restart or shutdown the machines from the Deadline Monitor, or Power Management shuts down the machines, the machines can only be powered on, and then they’re just stuck at the windows login screen, and no background processes have been started.

I hope the issue is clear?
I found an older forum thread detailing almost the same issue, but there was no solution at the end. See: Slave not starting

Is this normal behavior?
I would really like to avoid running it as a service on our workstations, because there’s no way for our artists to visually interact with it. But at the same time Power Management really seem to be a great tool, being able to shut down unneeded workers, and save the environment and our powerbill.

I really hope someone can help me figure out what is going on.

All the best

André

Make sure your Idle Shutdown and Machine Startup settings in PM are correct: https://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/10.1/1_User%20Manual/manual/power-management.html#idle-shutdown-ref-label

Only use the “Shutdown” option. Don’t use the Suspend or Hybrid Shutdown options.

In “Machine Startup” TAB: https://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/10.1/1_User%20Manual/manual/power-management.html#machine-startup

Make sure this setting is enabled: " Send Remote Command To Start Worker After Waking Up Machines"

Follow these instructions if you want your Windows machines to auto-login at boot: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/324737/how-to-turn-on-automatic-logon-in-windows

If you don’t want the security issue of entering your username password above, then you will need to configure Deadline to run as a service and then it will always run after a reboot/machine startup.

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