Good news is I’m using vmnic0 and vmnic2 so we are golden. Hop up to ‘virtual switches’ and check your config. So we need to check our vMotion network to ensure that vmnic1 isn’t being used. We can see that every adapter supports WOL except for vmnic1. This can be found in the vSphere Web Client (which I’m trying to use more) under Standard Networks > Hosts > ESXi02 > Manage > Networking > Physical Adapters Go to your ‘physical adapters’ to determine if WOL is supported. Now we have checked our physical environment, let’s check our virtual environment. The ports that your vMotion network plugs into need to be set to ‘Auto’ as for WOL to work the ‘magic’ with certain manufacturers this has to go over a 100Mbps network connection. Eh don’t you mean my vSwitch config Craig? Nope I mean your physical switch config. For the purposes of this how to, I’m going to assume you have this nailed.Ĭheck you switch config. So obviously you need to check that vMotion is working. VCenter uses the vMotion network to send the ‘magic’ WOL packet. I use a couple of HP N40L Microservers and the good news is these bad boys do.
So here it is, let’s crack on and get it configured.įirst things first, we need to check our BIOS supports WOL and enable it. I was configuring Distributed Power Management and thought I would see if a ‘how to’ existed and perhaps my ‘Google magic’ was not working, as I couldn’t find a guide on configuring WOL with ESXi5. vCentre tries to use IPMI first, then iLO and lastly WOL. VCenter utilises IPMI, iLO and WOL to ‘take’ the physical server out of standby mode. Distributed Power Management is an excellent feature within ESXi5, it’s been around for a while and essentially migrates workloads to fewer hosts to enable the physical servers to be placed into standby mode when they aren’t being utilised.įinance dudes like it as it saves ‘wonga’ and Marketing dudettes like it as it give ‘green credentials’.