Power Management

Power management covers the tools and methods available for controlling your dedicated server's power state — rebooting, switching off, and recovering from critical failures. This article explains how to perform these actions through the Customer Portal and VNC console, and how to use rescue mode to restore a server that is unable to boot normally.

Power management via Customer Portal

Rebooting and switching down the server via the Customer Portal is done by sending a command to the PDU automation, which turns off the power to the outlet to which the server is connected. This shutdown method can cause software, filesystem, or server component failures. To avoid, protection mechanisms are installed on both the PDU automation and the server.

When the protection is triggered, the PDU will prevent the server from rebooting or shutting down, and the notification will appear on the Customer Portal page:

"Power management is currently unavailable because of a running operation on the server. Please try again later."

This occurs when there is an ongoing automation task on the server or the server is in maintenance mode. This could be due to operations performed by the Servers.com team or tasks initiated by the server users, such as firmware updates or failure diagnostics.

How to reboot the dedicated server

Rebooting a server may be required to resolve accumulated system errors, apply software updates or other purposes.

The server can be rebooted in two ways: via the Customer Portal and via the VNC console.

Customer Portal

To reboot the server via the Customer Portal, complete the following steps:

In the left-hand menu, navigate to Dedicated Servers → Manage
Select the server and click Details
Scroll to the Power section and select Reboot
To confirm this action, enter your account password in the pop-up window and click Continue

The server will be rebooted. You can check the server status in the Status field in this section. If the status does not change, try using the Refresh button.

If the server does not reboot, refer to the Power management via Customer Portal section above for detailed information.

VNC console

To reboot the server via the VNC console, complete the following steps:

Open the Customer Portal and navigate to Dedicated Servers → Manage
Select the server and click Details
In the Details section, click VNC console and confirm your action by entering your account password in the opened window
In the opened console, click ▹ to open the control bar → Show Extra keys → Send Ctrl+Alt+Delete

The server will be rebooted.

How to switch off the dedicated server

Temporary server shutting down allows for scheduled maintenance, equipment replacement, or upgrades without risking data corruption.

The server can be switched off in two ways: via the Customer Portal and via the VNC console.

Customer Portal

To switch off the server via the Customer Portal, complete the following steps:

Open the Customer Portal and navigate to Dedicated Servers → Manage
Select the server and click Details
Scroll to the Power section and select Off
To confirm this action, enter your account password in the pop-up window and click Continue

The server will be switched off. You can check the server status in the Status field in this section. If the status does not change, try using the Refresh button.

If the server does not switch off, refer to the Power management via Customer Portal section above for detailed information.

VNC console

To switch off the server via the VNC console, complete the following steps:

Open the Customer Portal and navigate to Dedicated Servers → Manage
Select the server and click Details
In the Details section, click VNC console and confirm your action by entering your account password in the opened window
In the opened console:
- For Linux-based systems, execute the following command:
```
shutdown -h
```
- For Windows systems, click ▹ to open the control bar → Show Extra keys → Click the Windows icon → Shutdown

The server will be switched off.

As long as the dedicated server is not canceled, the billing for bare-metal and all its additional services is charged at the standard rate, even if the server is switched off.

What is the rescue mode?

Rescue mode is a useful feature for dedicated and cloud servers, allowing you to diagnose, fix problems and restore server functionality in case of failures. This feature is accessible to users via the Customer Portal control panel.

Imagine that something went wrong with the OS configuration; for example, the GRUB loader configuration file is corrupted, and the server shows a black screen and is unable to boot:

In cases where the OS is affected by critical system errors or the server is unable to boot properly, rescue mode may come in handy.

This issue might be solved in a number of ways, one of which is using rescue mode.

How to restore a dedicated server using rescue mode

In rescue mode, the server connection occurs via a public IP address, so it's essential that the server has a configured public network to utilize this function.

Please note that when using rescue mode, server power outlets are rebooted, and the server shuts down immediately. This can potentially cause database failures and damage to the OS filesystem. Therefore, when enabling rescue mode, it's crucial to perform a graceful shutdown to allow the operating system to properly terminate all services.

To enter rescue mode, complete the following steps:

In the left-hand menu, navigate to Dedicated Servers → Manage
In the My servers section, choose the server and click Details
Click the Reboot to rescue button and wait for an email with temporary login credentials (this usually takes up to 10 minutes)

The email will be sent to Contacts with Primary and Technical roles

Use credentials to access the server via SSH:

$ ssh 123.45.67.89 -l root
Warning: Permanently added '123.45.67.89' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
root@123.45.67.89's password:
* Welcome to DMGMTSrvInit 1.0 x86_64 [based on CentOS 6 x86_64]
Dell OpenManage Deployment Toolkit:
- RAID:    raidcfg
- DRAC:    racadm4, racadm5, idracadm7
- BIOS:    syscfg
- SYSTEM:  omconfig, omreport, dsu
Additional utils:
- RAID:    mdadm
- FS:      lvm, xfs, jfs, e2fs, nfs, ntfs, dosfs, parted, fdisk, cfdisk, sfdisk, grub
- EDITORS: vi, nano, joe
- SYSTEM:  dmidecode, smartmontools, testdisk, hddtemp, lshw, memtester, ipmitool
- NETWORK: ethtool, tcpdump, mtr, traceroute, tcptraceroute, nmap, dstat
- TOOLS:   rsync, lftp, curl, wget, nc, screen, mc, chkrootkit
You can check speedtest files in your browser, url: http://<server ip>/

A list of useful commands is displayed upon login

To recover the GRUB configuration file, complete the following steps:

Get the list of available disks and partitions using the lsblk command

[root@dmgmtsrvinit.pxe ~]# lsblk
NAME                              MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sdb                                 8:16   0  1.8T  0 disk
├─sdb1                              8:17   0    1M  0 part
├─sdb2                              8:18   0  500M  0 part
│ └─md127                           9:127  0  500M  0 raid1
└─sdb3                              8:19   0  1.8T  0 part
  └─md126                           9:126  0  1.8T  0 raid1
    ├─C1500302784I0-home (dm-0)   253:0    0  1.8T  0 lvm
    ├─C1500302784I0-rootfs (dm-1) 253:1    0   10G  0 lvm
    └─C1500302784I0-swap (dm-2)   253:2    0    2G  0 lvm
sda                                 8:0    0  1.8T  0 disk
├─sda1                              8:1    0    1M  0 part
├─sda2                              8:2    0  500M  0 part
│ └─md127                           9:127  0  500M  0 raid1
└─sda3                              8:3    0  1.8T  0 part
  └─md126                           9:126  0  1.8T  0 raid1
    ├─C1500302784I0-home (dm-0)   253:0    0  1.8T  0 lvm
    ├─C1500302784I0-rootfs (dm-1) 253:1    0   10G  0 lvm
    └─C1500302784I0-swap (dm-2)   253:2    0    2G  0 lvm

Seems like disk /dev/mapper/C1500302784I0-rootfs contains the root partition and disk /dev/md127 contains /boot

Mount these partitions:

mkdir /mnt/root
mount /dev/mapper/C1500302784I0-rootfs /mnt/root
mount /dev/md127 /mnt/root/boot

You'll also need to mount several other partitions in order to make the grub2-mkconfig command work properly:

mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/root/sys
mount -t proc none /mnt/root/proc

Change the root directory using the chroot command:
```
chroot /mnt/root
```

Execute the grub2-mkconfig command, which will generate new GRUB configuration file:

[root@dmgmtsrvinit.pxe /]# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Generating grub configuration file ...
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.10.0-514.26.2.el7.x86_64
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-3.10.0-514.26.2.el7.x86_64.img
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64.img
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-0-rescue-7dafe89409d74ef2a70c495f0148d7e3
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-0-rescue-7dafe89409d74ef2a70c495f0148d7e3.img
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
done

The command executed successfully, apart from a few warning messages

Exit the chroot and shut down the server properly:

[root@dmgmtsrvinit.pxe /]# exit
[root@dmgmtsrvinit.pxe ~]# shutdown -h now
Broadcast message from root@dmgmtsrvinit.pxe (/dev/pts/0) at 18:29 ...
The system is going down for halt NOW!
[root@dmgmtsrvinit.pxe ~]# Connection to 123.45.67.89 closed by remote host.

How to exit rescue mode

As soon as recovery work is finished, click the Exit rescue mode button in the Customer Portal. The server will exit rescue mode and boot normally the OS installed on its disks.

On this page