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New SMA WOL Relay method limitations?

We're having a nightmare since this change to WOL behaviour. We used the previous method in v7.1 where the SMA sent all packets to around 7,000 Windows devices. This was working fine. Now after updating to v8.1, we've been forced down this Relay route and it looks like it doesn't like the big numbers we have. When a schedule was set to target a label with over 7,000 Windows PC's on it, it seems to have failed. It works however if I target a single school at a time. So I'm left with having to create dozens, possibly hundreds of schedules. It's an admin nightmare.

There is no networking issue as the central SMA was able to send the WOL packets from itself to all destination LAN's thanks to our Telecoms team. The new WOL Relays are obviously working because they can send the packets when given a smaller number of devices to target.

I had tried a schedule which had a single label for the target devices and then added all our on-site WOL Relays. It clearly didn't like this but didn't do much to tell us why. I can see this having each relay sending wasted/useless packets but we wanted to keep the schedule simple. So there seems to be some kind of limitation here that hasn't been documented.

The scheduling choices are rudimentary also. There is no custom option implemented. So we can't, for example, configure a daily WOL for Monday to Friday without having to create a separate schedule for each day or simply setting a single schedule to everyday.

I'm vaguely aware of why the design had to change after a support call. As a technical person, I need more info though because I can't quite figure out why a WOL packet coming from the SMA is any different from one coming from a relay agent. The documentation (or KB) should have been clearer for legacy customers to explain to them why, all of sudden, the WOL method was forcibly changing. This has had a major impact on the way we manage our estate.

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  • You may want to vote and comment here:

    https://kace.uservoice.com/forums/82699-sma-k1000/suggestions/33852664-allow-wol-across-subnets-without-relay-or-allow-th - Channeler 6 years ago
    • the fun thing is:
      This was always possible, but the customer needs to setup his environment correctly.
      Since the magic packet is not routable the router admin needs to make this manually. And if the routers are setup correctly it works.
      The relay simply takes this task from the shoulders of these people. (iE from the shoulders of the people who don't know how networks work but are paid to do so) - Nico_K 6 years ago
      • @Nico_K Well we had our 200 site WAN beautifully configured to allow the SMA to sit centrally and send all the magic packets to our endpoints. Although the scheduling was still pretty poor. Now, possibly because of the fear of edge routers needing to allow the magic packets through causing some security risk, we have to switch to this seemingly-rushed relay method which doesn't appear to scale very well. If they fix the scheduling... make it more like Patching then that will go a long way to make up for this but just now I'm facing hundreds of schedules to deliver weekday WOL'ing and overnight patching WOL'ing because it doesn't like being asked to send magic packets to all of our endpoints via multiple relays. The UI supports adding multiple relays but I don't think it likes using them. - mcnaugha 6 years ago
    • @Channeler I think I did that before coming here. Just wanted to ignite the conversation to see how many customers are affected. We've been KACE customers for around a decade now and we only just got one of our suggestions implemented in 8.0 or 8.1 that was made nearly a decade ago. So as you can imagine, my faith in the UserVoice service is minimal. - mcnaugha 6 years ago
      • well, I see with every upgrade that from the top 10 UV choices 5 are implemented (and 3 additional could be closed since they want functions which work since years but not as they like that, one is the one from Channelers link, since: WOL without relay works well if the infrastructure is setup as it needs to be) - Nico_K 6 years ago

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