One machine is completely off with no power to it's NICs the other is on, it can't possibly see both. WOL packet is sent to the SFF only after the VM shutdown after 5 minutes.

I've attempted a Port based VLAN, a tag based VLAN all with unique IDs and a completely dumb swtich.

Even when I spoof the VMs WAN MAC to the SFF it still won't issue the WAN IP. This was know in the first post though.

The only thing I can think of it the SH3 locks the MAC AND the Port the MAC was detected on. If this is the case then using a intermediate switch would (in theory) cure this along with the VMs WAN MAC being spoofed one only power to one machine at a time, It's doesn't. As stated in other posts a dumb switch/PVLAN & Tag based VLAN results in no IP again even with only one machine running.

The next thing to try is to spoof the MAC and physically move the ethernet cable over the the Port it appears to have locked on to.

Seen as there's no SSH/Telnet access to the SH3 I need to manually power cycle it. This makes the whole project pointless.

Another solution is to purchase a smart plug where I can get the Pi script to power cycle that when it detects the VM as offline. Of course this plug would have to be LAN only as there's no WAN connection.

Another solution is to purchase a smart plug where I can get the Pi script to power cycle that when it detects the VM as offline. Of course this plug would have to be LAN only as there's no WAN connection.

Isn’t that a different failure scenario to the one which you were attempting to resolve with a primary and backup pfSense instance though?

Even if you had managed to get the above working, you would still have the possibility that the SH3 was unresponsive rather than your devices - so would still need something like this to reset the SH3?

Seen as the SH3 won't give up the WAN IP with a reboot it will have to be part of the backup solution otherwise having a backup firewall auto boot is pointless.

Yes that is a possibility, it's remote though as for all the bad features the SH3 has I haven't had to reboot it in years until recently.

Well chaps...

I decided to reinstall OPNsense on the SFF and spoof the WAN MAC (igb1) from the VM, shut the VM down and allowed the SFF to boot from WOL. It got a WAN IP!

To make sure this wasn't a fluke I shut down the SFF and booted the VM, still gets a WAN IP!

I then turned the VM off again and allowed the Pi to boot SFF after 5 mins...again success! I tried this three times now and every time it's worked...Yay!

Now worth noting. Both VM & SFF are plugged into Port 2 & 4 respectively on the SH3, proof the SH3 will give out a WAN IP on any of the ports. Only one is ever powered on at any one time, the other is completely dead, no NIC lights at all. As long as the MAC that the SH3 has locked on to is spoofed it works.

Okay so the next stage in the project is to make script that will SSH into the SFF and tell it to power off when the VM runs, should be easy. If not I can do that part manually.

Thanks to all for responding!

Last question on the original post is anyone knows. The 4G backup dongle that Virgin advertise, can that be used on any device or is it tied into the SH in router mode?

Edited by mrjay84 (Thu 24-Mar-22 16:44:42)

Good news on the OPNsense front.

I wonder why it didn't work previously when you tried with two other SFF/bare metal machines? Weird - did you change anything?

What's the failure scenario that your trying to mitigate with the active / standby OPNsense boxes? May help to understand then if the script idea will be workable in the situation where a OPNsense box becomes non-responsive or OPNsense itself etc? Still a bit unclear to me.

Edit: typo me using pfSense in lieu of OPNsense. Doh!

Edited by Pheasant (Thu 24-Mar-22 18:53:26)

No idea mate lol. I did copy and paste the MAC some maybe I messed up somewhere.

The OPNsense VM is hosted on an Unraid server. Sometimes I need to reboot it or power down for maintenance reasons, and the occasional crash. If the VM is off then there's no internet connection, and as I work away half the year, I'm unable to reset it via IMPI without a working connection.

This is where the script comes in. It detects the VM as being offline then boots the SFF which provides an internet connection. Then I can login to servers IMPI and tell it to reboot.

Once Unraid starts the VM it will send a power off command to the SFF telling it to shutdown.