ESXi 5.5 VM Autostart/stop

[patrickds]

I've recently noticed that on ESXi 5.5 (can't say for sure on other versions) the automatic VM startup/shutdown doesn't work as expected.

VMs that are set to manual startup, will not shut down properly either, only VMs set to automatic startup get shut down on host reboot or shutdown.

If I recall correctly, this was not the case before, and all running VMs should be stopped, even when their startup is set to manual.

Tested on 5.5 build 2068190 (latest) and previous one (before September patches)

Can anyone confirm this?

[smithar]

I will try to reproduce this in my setup. Could you please let me know the steps that you followed. Do you have few VMs in auto startup and few in manual startup? What is the VM shutdown action that you have set? Please let me know

[patrickds]

I had 1 VM in Automatic, 2 in Manual, all running.

Shutdown action is Shut down Guest

VM in Automatic got stopped as expected, then the 2 others crashed when the host continued shutting down itself.

[smithar]

Please let me know few more details:

1. Did the VM's in manual setting power off while the host was shutdown/rebooted?

2. Are you able to power on these VMs manually?

[patrickds]

1. that's precisely the issue: VMs in Manual setting do not shut down or power off on host reboot/shutdown. They crash when the host goes down.

2. manual shutdown (through Shut down Guest) by VMware tools works.

Funny thing I just observed: I also have a non-running VM in manual setting, which generates an error upon host shutdown: not supported in the current in the current power state (Powered off).

Log shows no attempt to shutdown the running VM in manual list.

I just tested shutting down the VM in manual list first, and got the same events: running VM in Auto list shuts down, then an error message because it cannot stop the other  powered off VM, and then it continues.

There is no attempt to stop the second (normally running) VM in manual list.

So it looks like the error on stopping the first, powered off VM, interrupts the VM shutdown process, and makes the host go down before finishing VM shutdown.

[patrickds]

looks like that's not it.

I removed the VM that gave the error from the inventory, and retried.

It still did not attempt to shutdown the remaining VM in manual list.

Must be something about the VM itself.

I had the same behaviour on a different server, with a different customer, though.

I'll be testing some other things.

[patrickds]

solved it.

I moved the VM that wouldn't work into the automatic group, and rebooted the host: it got shut down like i wanted.

After rebooting, I moved it back into manual, and rebooted again: it still works.

So it looks like the autostart/stop settings aren't set to the VM unless you move it to the Automatic (or any order) list once.