ESX 5.1 - Host Wake on LAN

[DJMK4]

Hi all,

Trying to get this working, at the moment I have an Intel Pro 1000 Dual NIC which I have found out doesnt support WOL.

I had to use this card as apparently the onboard card on the Dell machine was not compatible, so that was disabled under BIOS, wierdly when I look in ESX at the network adaptors, the two NIC physical interfaces on the one card are showing up, I guess its the same card as it has a very very similar MAC address apart from the last part which is different for the other interface.

Anyway long story short, apparently one of the interfaces on this card supports WOL, the other doesnt.

I have been trying to follow some guides to get WOL working for my host, as I want to be able to boot the physical ESX host up remotely by sending a WOL packet.


It seems my ESX host, and my windows VM, are sharing one interface, and it looks like its the interface that doesnt support WOL. If I find a way to change this over, should it be a simple case of ensuring WOL is enabled on BIOS for dedicated cards? then download something like Solarwinds Wake on LAN, set-up port forwarding to the IP of my ESX host on my router.

I did give it a go but couldnt get it working initially. Is there anything else I need to configure in the ESX host to get this working? or am I running myself in to a brick wall with this card.

The card is intel pro 1000 mt I believe


Other guides on the web are saying things like set-up vmotion and other bits, but then are going on about sending packets from a clustered set-up.

Not what I want really

I just simply want my machine to shut down but power still to the NIC

When the NIC recieves a magic packet, boot up and let it go through the ESX loading.

 

[DJMK4]

Because its at my old house where folks are, and is partly used for vms running labs, and partly as a Plex server. I don't live at the same location but its there for a reason.

Its not a costly thing to run but I don't use it ALL the time. So was wondering if WOL was available if I didn't need it for period, and could easily boot back up.

Alternatively the bios has an on and off timer.

 

[DJMK4]

It sounds like you are using the ESX management interface which has a firewall protecting it, as opposed to a normal guest vSwitch which does not have a firewall.

Are you saying you want to shut down the whole machine including the hypervisor, and then have WOL on the Physical Host ?

The above is correct, I want to shut the host down and be able to wake it up. So this is the host, not the guest

From what I remember checking earlier under network adaptors, the VM I have (server 2008) is sharing the same NIC interface as the ESX management interface (that leaves one physical interface on the NIC unused).

I dont get why one interface was showing WOL supported and the other not?

When you say firewall is this somewhere embedded in esx or do you mean my router/firewall?

 

[DJMK4]

WOL has zero to do with ESX. Forget it's even in the equation.

All you need is a WOL-compatible BIOS/network card, the MAC address for the listening interface and to be able to send a magic packet on the local subnet to that MAC (you will need to set up a port forwarding rule to allow that traffic through on your parents' firewall if you want to trigger WOL from outside their house).

Yeah I was more questioning why ESX was showing one of the interfaces on the card as WOL supported, the other not. You would think if Intel make a card, that both should be WOL capable? some info on the card are saying they had problems with WOL not showing as compatible with this card, even the official whitepapers, however others say that it does work with certain drivers.

Its a PCI-X card, where as my Dell 755 machine has PCI-E, but the card still slots in and works.


The box is a Dell 755 Small Form Factor, 8GB RAM, E6750 chip.

I did have an attempt at trying WOL but didnt work, I have a funny feeling I might need to change the ESX host to use the "other" interface on the NIC, which apparently according to ESX WOL is supported on. I am pretty sure I left WOL enabled in the BIOS.

Aslong as I can wake the box up, it will boot in to ESX. Will do some more fiddling.

Is it even possible to sleep a vSphere host? I'm very rusty on WOL because I've never really had any luck getting it to work (other than it constantly waking PCs up even when it's disabled) so I tend to ignore that it exists.

Dell 755, E6750 CPU, 8GB RAM.

I dont want to sleep it, it will be shut down, with the NIC still listening out, although not 100% convinced this card will be WOL compatible.

 

[DJMK4]

I must admit that.... I'm a little confused now by which one.... a) host machine or b) VM is the one that you want to shut down and/or wake via WOL

this is all I can find on it with a Google search

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/i...UID-84F513F3-52CA-4973-B99D-010B18D48725.html

I've always found it best to suspend or shutdown VM's before shutting the Host down.... but that's just me

The above would be no good as you need a clustered set-up.

Host is what I want to WOL, nothing to do with VMs at all

Aslong as the Dell boots up via WOL, it will load ESX, and one of my VMs

As I said I am going to have a look around at drivers to try and get full functionality WOL on this card, and possibly look at the 2nd interface which apparently ESX is saying is WOL compatible, but that maybe misinformation, or I may need to look at a new card which fully supports it.

It should just be a case of standard WOL through BIOS.