The DSM Explorer › Computers and Users Folder › All Computers › Computer Name Pane › Homepage Tab › Quick Launch (configuration mode) › Waking Virtual Machines (Virtual WOL) › Virtual Environment Scenario

Virtual Environment Scenario

A typical virtual environment includes a domain manager, an AM remote agent computer, and various virtualization server types containing DSM agent and scalability virtual machines as shown in the following illustration:

The DSM domain manager manages all computers, and the AM remote agent computer collects details about the VMs for both RVI and virtual WOL operations.

In this scenario, you can perform the virtual WOL using the following methods:

• Send a software delivery job to a virtual machine

  The job container is sent to the appropriate scalability server, which wakes up a VM using the WOL functionality of CAF API.

• Use the DSM Explorer on the domain manager to wake a particular VM

  For more information, see Wake a Virtual Machine Using DSM Explorer.

• Use remote control to connect to a VM by waking it first
• Remote control wakes up a VM when you click Power Up on the Connection Settings, Advanced tab. Also, you can connect to a sleep mode VM. You are prompted with a message whether to wake up and connect to the VM.
• Send a request to the OSIM boot server to wake a virtual machine as part of the OS installation job

  You can configure the Wake-On-LAN option in the Setup OS Installation dialog during the activation of OS installation.

How CA ITCM Wakes a Virtual Machine

The method for waking a virtual machine differs from the method that is used to wake a physical computer. Each platform virtualization vendor provides their own SDK for WOL operations. As the AM remote agent already uses these SDKs to collect inventory, the agent can perform virtual WOLs using the new generic SendWOL method. CA ITCM uses the following process to wake virtual machines.

• When a virtual machine registers with the DSM domain manager, the domain manager does not initially know that it is a virtual machine. The WOL protocol type is changed from "nw" to "vm" only when the AM remote agent next runs and sends the required relationship information between the virtual machine and its host. This action also disables WOL on the virtual machine (the default setting for virtual machines).
• The AM remote agent gathers the following inventory information about VMs from their virtualization servers and reports this information to the DSM domain manager and MDB:

  Note: The RVI agent cannot collect certain BIOS inventory attributes from Linux virtual machines that are running on Microsoft Hyper-V and XenServer servers, Virtual WOL is not supported on such Linux virtual machines.

  • FQDN of the parent virtualization server of the VM for waking up.
  • Platform virtualization type (VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and so on)
  • Login credentials for the virtualization server
  • Vendor-specific identifying string for the VM

    Note: Typically, the string is a virtual GUID but it could be a system ID or serial number.

• The AM remote agent stores this information in a simple flat file named rvidb.txt under the folder CA\DSM\Agent\units\00000001\uam\rvi. This file can be accessed to add and retrieve information about a virtualization server given its URL. To avoid unlimited growth of this file, all aged virtualization servers and their respective lists of VMs are deleted automatically after one year.
• When the domain manager receives a vWOL request, it delegates the request to a scalability server. The scalability server in turn delegates it to the AM remote agent computer. The AM remote agent computer then wakes the virtual machine.