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I have a single esxi host I want to use WOL (wake on lan) to remotely power on. I do not have a vcenter server setup. Everything i've read says you have to have a Vcenter server and Vmotion setup to utilize wake on lan. Is this correct or can I send WOL packets to a single host and have it power on? If so how can I do this?

Thanks for your response.

I'm currently building a home lab and trying to decide if I want to spend the extra money on a super micro board that has IPMI natively. The problem with that is those board support only ECC Ram so that starts driving cost up. This is only a home lab so i don't need ECC. I would rather buy a 50-90 mother board, 32gb cheap ram, and a intel 3.3 quad core processor. I want to have the ability to power the lab on remotely when i'm traveling. I have a VPN setup to my house so I can accomplish this. I don't want the server running 24/7. So i'm asking the question to determine if I can go with the cheaper solution using WOL vs paying more for a IPMI solution.

This is the IPMI solution but its really expensive.

Supermicro Motherboard uATX DDR3 1600 LGA 1150 MBD-X10SLH-F-O Intel Xeon E3-1230V3 Haswell, 3.3GHz, 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150, 80W Quad-Core Server Processor Crucial 32GB Kit (8GBx4) DDR3L 1600MT/s (PC3-12800) DR x8 ECC UDIMM

Suggestions?

Sven
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marcaum
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1 Answers1

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The proper solution for vSphere and host power management is linked to the Distributed Power Management feature available at the highest tier of vSphere Enterprise Plus licensing.

You can place hosts in Standby/Sleep and wake via WOL and/or IPMI/ILO.

But this cool stuff all requires vCenter.

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I believe you can send generic Wake-on-LAN packets to an ESXi host if your NIC is configured for it. Obviously, this would need to be sent from another, non-virtualized system...

But why go through the trouble? If you have IPMI or ILO/DRAC or any out-of-band management solution, wouldn't that be a better idea?

ewwhite
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  • Just in case anyone stumbles upon this, I tested sending generic Wake-on-LAN packets, did not work with the E1000 network card, had to switch to VMXNET3 and succeeded. Also found that info in the official vSphere documentation: https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc_50%2FGUID-35CD5E60-6FFA-47CE-A5CF-78B6D6B42CB8.html – Anton Kaiser Oct 14 '16 at 21:19