DPM and Wake-On-LAN

[Optic_Nerve]

Hi,

How do you enable Wake-On-LAN support in vCenter? When I choose "Enter Standby Mode" for a host in vCenter I get the error as per the attached JPG.

The part I am most interested in is "Or, configure vCenter to use Wake-On-LAN". How is this done? I realise I could configure IPMI under Configuration, Power Management but I specifically want to test DPM using Wake-On-LAN only. According to the vSphere documentation there are three ways to use DPM. HP iLO, IPMI and Wake-On-LAN. The stuff that can be configured in the Power Management section is for iLO and IPMI. I specifically want to test it with boring old Wake-On-LAN - which used to work just fine using ESX 3.5 on exactly the same hardware without any configuration required.

When I click on Configuration, Network Adapters all the network adapters in the server say they support Wake-On-LAN.

What am I missing?

Cheers,

David

[AndreTheGiant]

Check all WOL prerequisites at page 62 of:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_resource_mgmt.pdf

Andre

[Optic_Nerve]

Hi Andre,

Been there, done that. My hosts have all the pre-requisites. They work fine with DPM using ESX 3.5 (which only uses WOL) without having to configure anything special.

My question is specifically how do I "configure vCenter to use Wake-On-LAN" as per the wording in the error I attached.

Cheers,

David

[AndreTheGiant]

"configure vCenter to use Wake-On-LAN"

Is nothing to do a VC level.

If you set ILOE parameters that ILOE will be used.

If you set IPMI parameters that IPMI will be used.

In the last case WOL will be used.

Andre

[Optic_Nerve]

Hi Andre,

Thanks for the reply.

I didn't think there was anything to do with vCenter - but the error does SPECIFICALLY say "configure vCenter to use Wake-On-LAN" so I thought I would ask. It's just another vague error message which doesn't really mean anything.

I have not configured any IPMI or iLO settings yet WOL simply does not work (even though all the NICs show that they support WOL). It worked fine on the same physical hardware running ESX 3.5. Go figure...

Cheers,

David

[AndreTheGiant]

I see your screenshoot, but there is nothing to do in vCenter. Be really sure that NIC are WOL enabled (you have write that there are ok, but check again ).

Read also this link:

http://solori.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/in-the-lab-vsphere-dpm-quirky-but-functional/

Andre

[cmacmillan]

by "check vcenter" i believe VMware means look at your nic wol from vcenter and make sure that your management network vmkernel nic is listed as wol. That's the only vcenter role for wol-based DPM.

Andre points to my blog which covers dpm in vsphere but the wol aspect is the same for vcenter 2.5.

--Collin C. MacMillan

SOLORI - Solution Oriented, LLC

http://blog.solori.net

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[Optic_Nerve]

Hi Collin,

The error says, and I am directly quoting:

"Or, configure vCenter to use Wake-On-LAN"

I think that is very clearly an incorrect statement. There is no such thing as configuring vCenter to use Wake-On-LAN so it simply shouldn't say that.

I didn't actually think that anything needed to be configured in vCenter anyway. I posted my question because of that very misleading wording to see if there was some configuration option in vCenter that I didn't know about but it turns out there isn't (as confirmed by Andre and yourself).

The problem still remains. All the NICs show as supporting WOL yet it doesn't work. I can format these boxes (they are test boxes) and put ESX 3.5 U4 on them and configure them in exactly the same way (same service console and VMkernel IPs etc) and connect them to a vCenter 2.5 instance and DPM using WOL works perfectly.

If I format the machines back to ESX 4.0 Classic, configure them exactly the same way (SC and VMkernel) and connect them to my vCenter 4.0 instance then attempt to use standby I get that error. Same hardware, same IPs and config. There is some kind of regression there.

I can configure IPMI settings in the ESX 4.0 "Power Management" section and get it to work this way. I was only doing this as a learning exercise so that I understood DPM in ESX 4.0 properly. I wanted to get it working first with WOL, then with IPMI and finally with iLO. The WOL method just doesn't work - add to that the error which specifically told me to configure vCenter for WOL and confusion reigns.

Cheers,

David

[Optic_Nerve]

Hi All,

I just had a thought (it's rare but it happens ). On ESX 4.0 I have my service console and VMkernel interfaces on a distributed switch rather than a standard one.

I wonder if this causes WOL in DPM to stop working....?

Cheers,

David

[Optic_Nerve]

Hi All,

Some further information...

I moved my service console and VMkernel interfaces back to a standard virtual switch and WOL worked perfectly.

I probably only had to move the VMkernel interface but as they both shared the same physical NICs I had to move both.

So there you go - DPM with WOL doesn't seem to work when the VMkernel interface is on a vNDS.

Cheers,

David