Question on VM's I powered off coming back on...

[soleblazer]

Hi,

I am sure I am missing something trivial here.

I powered off about 20 virtual machines.  I am running ESX 4.0, setup in a cluster with DRS enabled.

I shut the machines down a few days ago and noticed today CPU usage on the cluster was a little high again.  To my dismay I see the machines back running again.  I look in 'Task and Events' on the cluster and it says that the power on was initiated by 'System'

Any idea how that would happen?  I have DRS set to fully automated, but I can't remember DRS doing anything like that before.  I am using vmware HA as well, but vm monitoring is not checked.

I'm assuming this is something simple I am missing, please let me know.

[Troy_Clavell]

Underneath the Power on virtual machine initiated by "System".  Is there another task the says Initialing powering on?  Was that initiated by someone?  If they are off, assuming they are not VMware View guests, they should not get "automatically" powered by on.

[soleblazer]

No, it just says system when I look at the event on the cluster.  If I go to the individual VM and look at the event tab it just says "Task: Power on virtual machine" , the user column is blank.

after that I just see that DRS powered the VM on, etc.  Really has me scratching my head.

[Troy_Clavell]

check the tasks and events tab at the vCenter level.  That should give you more details into the task at the cluster level.  You should see the Initialize Powering on Task there.

[soleblazer]

Ok, here is the weird thing...

When I look at tasks and events for the datacenter, I see a bit more.  I have a modified user that only has access to see certain VM's.  WHat I see is that they are powering the machines on, but it actually says they are Initializing power on the datacenter object.  Right after that I see the actual VM being powered up by the System.

So an individual user must be powering on the VM, but it shows as they are doing that on the DataCenter object, I then see the System powering on the actual VM.

Does this make sense?

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

Yes, it makes sense.  So, finding the person/process associated with the account that is powering on the guests, I think you have your answer. Also, if you go higher than the datacenter level, you'll get more detail. got to the vCenter level.