Hi farmers!
The farmerbot is coming soon so for the ones interested, some guidelines to set up your nodes and their networking. This guide will explain how to setup the technical environment where the farmerbot will operate.
ZOS can utilize 2 NIC’s (Network Interface Card) of a node (server, workstation, desktop, …). The first NIC on the motherboard will always be what we call the ZOS/dmz NIC, the second one is used for public config’s (Gateway, public IP’s for workloads, …). So if you don’t have public IP’s in your farm, only the first NIC of your ZOS node will be used. This subnet is where the farmerbot operates. If you do have public IP’s the same applies.
Wake On LAN (WOL) is used to be able to boot (start) a ZOS node remotely that was shut down by the farmerbot. It works by sending what is called a ‘magic packet’ to the NIC MAC address of a ZOS node. If that NIC is setup correctly, aka ‘listening’ for the packet, the node will start up, post and boot ZOS. The farmerbot will keep a list of MAC addresses for nodes under it’s management, so it knows where to send the packet if it’s required.
WOL comes with a few requirements:
Enable WOL in the BIOS of your ZOS node.
A ZOS node must be capable of doing WOL. Have a look at your node hardware / BIOS manual. If so make sure to enable it in the BIOS! A bit of research will quickly tell you how to enable for your hardware. Some older motherboards do not support this, sometimes you can be lucky it does after a BIOS upgrade, but that is brand/model specific.
Some examples:
All your ZOS nodes and their first NIC (ZOS/dmz) should be in the same network subnet (also called network segment or broadcast domain).
This requires some basic network knowledge. WOL packets can not be send across different subnets by default, it can but this requires specific configuration on the firewall that connects the two subnets. Though cross-subnet WOL is currently not supported by the farmerbot.
A ‘magic’ WOL packet is sent only on networking layer 2 (L2 or the ‘data link layer’) based on MAC address. So not on L3 based on ip address. This is why all nodes that should be brought up via WOL, need to be in the same subnet.
You can check if this is the case like this: if for example one node has the ip 192.168.0.20/24, then all other nodes should have an ip between 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.254. You can calculate subnet ranges easely here: https://www.tunnelsup.com/subnet-calculator/
So for the 192.168.0.0/24 example, you can see the range under ‘Usable Host Range’:
Some NIC’s require WOL to be set on the NIC firmware.
This is fully handled by ZOS. Every time ZOS boots it will enable WOL on links if they require it. So if a ZOS node then is added to a farmerbot, it will have WOL enabled on its NIC when it’s turned off (by the farmerbot).
Your farmerbot can be run on any system, including on a node. It doesn’t have to be on the same network subnet as the nodes from the farm. The nodes of the farm on the other hand have to be in the same LAN. Don’t hesitate to ask your technical questions here, we and the community will help you set things up!
