Confused: WoL in DPM for ESXi 6.5 not working

[knebb]

Hi all,

I am a little bit confused (or just too stupid?).

I want to set up a DPM-enabled cluster of two ESXi 6.5 hosts running under VCSA 6.5 (latest updates installed).

I can right-click on my ESXi host (it is an old DELL T110) and set it to "stand-by" which works fine and the host powers off (or stand-by) and gets disconnected and shows as "Stand-By" in vCenter.

All fine so far. When right-clicking on the host an "Power On", vCenter tells me it is waking up the host but nothing happens. First, it stays at 10% and after some minutes the task switches to 25% where it stays for nearly forever. However, the ESXi host does not do anything. At least, it does not power on as I would have expected.

I met all needed items to configure it for power management:

• vMotion enabled and working between the two ESXi hosts
• physical NICs used on both ESXi hosts show "Enabled for Wake-on-Lan"
• vMotion is on the same layer network (no routers in between)

When I send a magic packet from a virtual machine (running on the second ESXi host) with the MAc of the ESXi host in question the host powers on immediately. So I assume I can rule out configuration issues on the ESXi host and on the physical network.

For me it looks like the ESXi host is not sending a proper WoL magic packet.

Anyone having an idea what I am missing?

Thanks, KNEBB

[knebb]

Meanwhile, I did a tcpdump packet trace to see what is happening.

When sending the magic packet from my VM it works fine:

12:44:18.725586 52:54:00:03:5e:38 (oui Unknown) > Broadcast, ethertype IPv4 (0x0800), length 144: vm.domain.de.45051 > 255.255.255.255.discard: UDP, length 102

        0x0000:  ffff ffff ffff 5254 0003 5e38 0800 4500  ......RT..^8..E.

        0x0010:  0082 0326 4000 4011 6d39 c0a8 0964 ffff  ...&@.@.m9...d..

        0x0020:  ffff affb 0009 006e a94b ffff ffff ffff  .......n.K......

        0x0030:  bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb  .0[.E..0[.E..0[.

        0x0040:  45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30  E..0[.E..0[.E..0

        0x0050:  5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af  [.E..0[.E..0[.E.

        0x0060:  bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb  .0[.E..0[.E..0[.

        0x0070:  45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30  E..0[.E..0[.E..0

        0x0080:  5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af  [.E..0[.E..0[.E.

While a packet from the ESXi host appears to be IPv6 even though I am not using IPv6 at all:

12:45:55.842646 3c:a8:2a:9f:e2:3c (oui Unknown) > 33:33:00:00:00:01 (oui Unknown), ethertype IPv6 (0x86dd), length 170: fe80::3ea8:2aff:fe9f:e23c.41324 > ip6-allnodes.discard: UDP, length 108

        0x0000:  3333 0000 0001 3ca8 2a9f e23c 86dd 6000  33....<.*..<..`.

        0x0010:  0000 0074 1101 fe80 0000 0000 0000 3ea8  ...t..........>.

        0x0020:  2aff fe9f e23c ff02 0000 0000 0000 0000  *....<..........

        0x0030:  0000 0000 0001 a16c 0009 0074 39d2 ffff  .......l...t9...

        0x0040:  ffff ffff bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af  .....0[.E..0[.E.

        0x0050:  bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb  .0[.E..0[.E..0[.

        0x0060:  45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30  E..0[.E..0[.E..0

        0x0070:  5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af  [.E..0[.E..0[.E.

        0x0080:  bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb  .0[.E..0[.E..0[.

        0x0090:  45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30 5bdb 45af bc30  E..0[.E..0[.E..0

        0x00a0:  5bdb 45af 0000 0000 0000                 [.E.......

The Dell wakes up on IPv4 magic packet but does not wake up on IPv6 based magic packets. Anyone knows how to tell ESXi/ vCenter to use IPv4 instead of IPv6?

Thanks again!

[knebb · Accepted solution]

Ok, the hint about IPv6 was leading to the right direction.

Disabling IPv6 completely on both ESXi hosts lead to the magic packets being send as IPv4 and my host waking up correctly.

Greetings

KNEBB