Can I hibernate or standby my host?

[Jim82]

Dear Community,

I'm running a single ESXi 5 host at home, with a couple VM's on. The VM's are NAS appliances hosting the family's photos, videos etc.

These are not required to be online 24/7, but only "by demand". I'm trying to save power and MTBF on the drives.

Hence my question:

Is it possible to someway hibernate, standby or the like with a single ESXi 5 host?

Thanks for any replies.

/Jim

[mikelane]

I know that ESXi supports Wake On LAN (WOL) when configured as part of a cluster using the Distributed Power Management (DPM) feature. I'm not aware of such a feature for a single ESXi host though ... I'm happy to be proved wrong though ...

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100337...

[NinjaHideout]

Yep, that's true. As long as your NIC supports Wake on LAN, there are a variety of tools out there that can wake the host remotely (so it doesn't have to be from vCenter or from your vSphere Client). When you don't need your host, you can then shut it down (ssh / vSphere Client).

[Jim82]

Thank you both, but my question remains unanswered. I know how to start it up via WOL and that works. But I need a way to hibernate or standby the host, OR completely shut it down, from an iPad or iPhone.

Thanks again.

[Jim82]

Solved, using vCMA and safari for iPad.

[shishir08]

Since your main moto is to save power so in that case you should hibernate your system because in hibernation it saves an image of your desktop, including all open windows and files.   Then it powers down your computer just as if you had turned it off.   When you turn your computer on again, your windows and files are open  just as you left them, and at the same time in standby it reduces the power  computer uses to almost nothing.  When you  select Standby, the power to your screen, hard drive, and peripheral  devices is cut.  However, the power to the computer's memory RAM is maintained so your open files stay open.

[Matt444]

Jim82, have you got any advice for someone wanting to accomplish the same thing as you (to set the host to standby and Wake on Lan) but doesn't own an iPad?

[Matt444]

Jim82 never mind, I solved the problem.

By changing a setting in the BIOS to tell the machine to wake on lan from the PCI device, I can wake the machine from a powerdown setting remotely using a utility downloaded from matcode.com.

I can use the vsphere client to power down the machine, and then use the utility to power it back on.  This isn't as elegant as a solution as if the ESXi server would simply hibernate on its own, but a solution nontheless.

Matt

[scerazy]

Why would anybody want ESX to hiberante?

It is a host to VM, it is to be ON always!

Seb

[parahumanoid]

No one.  Those that think they do, they just don't know how to get the desired effect otherwise.

To those who seek this kind of solution, I have two concepts for you: NAT port forwarding and Out-of-band management controller.  That's it.  Don't be lazy, make a few clicks.  No one is paying to automate this.  Or get reading on the scripting API.  Not that it will help 100%, but who knows.