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hotwired007
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi VM Powered off in Vsphere client but its not powered off in reality?

Hi i have a ESXi 4 Host (DL380 G5) running 5 VM's - 2 of them keep appearing to power off, ie state powered off in the client but they are still running fine - i can still use them through remote desktop - what could cause this?

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bulletprooffool
Champion
Champion

Occasionally virtual machines (VMs) get stuck in a zombie state and will not respond to a power-off command using the traditional vSphere client power controls. Rebooting a host will fix this condition — but rebooting is usually not an option. Fortunately, there are a few methods for forcing the VM to shut down without rebooting the host.

The methods below are listed in order of usage preference starting with using normal VM commands and ending with a brute force method.

Method 1 - Using the vmware-cmd service console command (the command-line interface equivalent of using the vSphere Client)

1. Log in to the ESX service console.

2. The vmware-cmd command uses the configuration file name (.vmx) of the VM to specify the VM to perform an operation on. You can type vmware-cmd -l to get a list of all VMs on the host and the path and name of their configuration file. The path uses the Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) or long name of the data store; alternatively, you can use the friendly name instead. If you do not want to type the path when using the vmware-cmd command you can change to the VM’s directory and run the command without the path.

3. You can optionally check the power state of the VM by typing vmware-cmd which will forcibly terminate the process for the specified VM.

4. You can check the state using the vmware-cmd command to see if it worked; if it did, the state should now be off.

All three of these methods work identically on ESX hosts in both VI3 and vSphere. These methods also work for ESXi, but their execution is a bit different. In a future blog post we will cover how to use these methods with ESXi.

One day I will virtualise myself . . .
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hotwired007
Contributor
Contributor

The servers can still be powered off - but i just cant access them with the console option - the play button is greyed out.

Everything else appears to run fine apart from the console - the performance charts, logs and the like all display fine.

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bulletprooffool
Champion
Champion

Have you verified that the processes are actually dead (as per previous post)

One day I will virtualise myself . . .
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DheereshLodhi
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I guess, you have restarted them recently. I would suggest you to please wait for some more time then reporting would be correct.

Regards

Dheeresh Lodhi

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hotwired007
Contributor
Contributor

I have ESXi i don't know how to conect to the console mode....

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bulletprooffool
Champion
Champion

By default this isn’t possible. But there’s a way to get this working, just do the following:

  1. Go to the ESXi console and press alt+F1

  2. Type: unsupported

  3. Enter the root password(No prompt, typing is blindly)

  4. At the prompt type “vi /etc/inetd.conf”

  5. Look for the line that starts with “#ssh” (you can search with pressing “/”)

  6. Remove the “#” (press the “x” if the cursor is on the character)

  7. Save “/etc/inetd.conf” by typing “:wq!”

  8. Restart the management service “/sbin/services.sh restart”

One day I will virtualise myself . . .
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jidhin
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Can you attach a screenshot of the same ....

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!
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hotwired007
Contributor
Contributor

The actual server is still running fine... see screenshot below:

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