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Asked: 2011-10-17 05:04:57 +0800 CST

How to shutdown a virtual machine on ESXi5 over an ssh terminal session?

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How can I shutdown a virtual machine when I am on the commandline of an ESXi5 host over ssh?

Sidenote:

To enable scripts on other machines to login to the ESXi without password, add the public key of the user on the other machine to the ESXi's "/etc/ssh/keys-root/authorized_keys" if you want to login as root. If you want to login as user x add the key to "/etc/ssh/keys-x/authorized_keys".

command-line-interface ssh remote-access vmware-esxi

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    From the section 'Using the ESXi 5.0 esxcli command to power off a virtual machine' in KB1014165 at the VMWare Knowledge base:

    The esxcli command can be used locally or remotely to power off a virtual machine running on ESXi 5.0. For more information, see the esxcli vm Commands section of the vSphere Command-Line Interface Reference.

    Open a console session where the esxcli tool is available, either in the ESXi Shell, the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA), or the location where the vSphere Command-Line Interface (vCLI) is installed.

    Get a list of running virtual machines, identified by World ID, UUID, Display Name and path to the .vmx configuration file, using the command:

    esxcli vm process list

    Power off one of the virtual machines from the list using the command:

    esxcli vm process kill --type=[soft,hard,force] --world-id=WorldNumber

    Note: Three power-off methods are available. Soft is the most graceful, hard performs an immediate shutdown, and force should be used as a last resort.

    Repeat step 2 and validate that the virtual machine is no longer running.

    I hope this helps :)

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  2. You can use vim-cmd:

    Here is an example (shutdown only one VM: SRV1):

    [root@ESX1:~] vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
Vmid   Name          File               Guest OS       Version  
1      SRV2   [NAS] SRV2/SRV2.vmx   winLonghornGuest   vmx-08
2      SRV1   [SAN] SRV1/SRV1.vmx   winLonghornGuest   vmx-08

[root@ESX1:~]  vim-cmd vmsvc/power.shutdown 2

    You can also shutdown all host VMs:

    /sbin/shutdown.sh && /sbin/poweroff

    Extracted from: http://www.sysadmit.com/2016/07/vmware-esxi-apagar-todas-las-vms-desde-SSH.html

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