My Dell servers are randomly powering themselves on :(

[ultimatebob]

I have two VMWare ESXi 6 servers (A Dell PowerEdge T310 and a PowerEdge T410) that randomly power themselves on. I have no idea why. It seems to happen overnight and during the weekend, and they both seem to power on at the same time.

At first I thought that my kid was doing it, until I checked the system logs and found out when they were being restarted. There is no way my kid was around to do that.

I think that I have Wake On LAN disabled on these systems, but perhaps I'm overlooking some obscure power recovery or remote management setting that is causing them to power themselves back on. We haven't had any power outages recently that explain this.

Has anyone else had a similar issue to this? If so, how did you figure out what was causing the issue?

 

[JeffMD]

Windows 10? I wiped it off my laptop when it was randomly powering it on overnight.

 

[ultimatebob]

Windows 10? I wiped it off my laptop when it was randomly powering it on overnight.

I have a Windows 10 system on my network, but it's not the system that's randomly powering itself on. I think that this issue was occurring before I upgraded it, too.

 

[Ketchup]

WOL would be my guess. Since you have the option in the BIOS as well as the OS, and any other power-management programs, I could see how one setting could be overlooked.

However, I don't see how this could be enabled if it is disabled from the BIOS (unless it is a UEFI and software can affect system settings).

 

[VirtualLarry]

If the mobos have Intel AMT(tm) / vPro(tm)(?), then they may turn themselves on.

 

[XavierMace]

If you have vCenter with HA/DRS setup it can power hosts up.

 

[ultimatebob]

If you have vCenter with HA/DRS setup it can power hosts up.

True, but I have my vCenter server hosted on the ESXi boxes that are currently down.

The only piece of the system that isn't down right now is the iSCSI storage server. Perhaps it's somehow pinging the boxes and waking them up.

It's too bad that my Dell support contracts are up on these boxes, because this is a great question for them. Until I figure it out, I'm just going to power off the surge strip connected to these systems.

 

[Dahak]

Do they seem to be powering on at the same times?

Nothing in the bios that is set to power them on at a specific time
Nothing set in the IPMI/Idrac that is set to power them on at a specific time ?

 

[LTC8K6]

Event logs?

 

[Fardringle]

Most Dell servers I've worked with have power recovery options in the BIOS to tell the system what to do after a power outage. The options are "Stay off" "Power On" and "Last State" or wording similar to that. "Stay off" will stay off, of course. "Last state" will leave the computer off if it was off before the power flicker, or turn it on if it was already on. "Power on" will always turn the computer on after any power flicker even if it was previously turned off, so if you have that option enabled, the servers could be turning on after nighttime power flickers/outages.