I've had a problem where the vSphere client thinks a machine is powered off and it's actually powered on, and I've solved that.
I'm now faced with the inverse situation - I have a VM that is powered off in reality, I've double-checked that the vmkload_app process does not exist for that VM, yes the vSphere client thinks it's powered on and won't let me power it off. How do I tell vSphere "no, this machine is actually powered off, please update your state." ?
