ESXi

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  • 1.  Scheduled poweroff and poweron of host and guest vms

    Posted Sep 12, 2016 09:15 AM

    Hi,

    I'm using ESXi 6 and i'm trying to replace my simple home server installation with an ESXi.

    Currently I poweroff my home server at 22:00 and restart it on the next day at 8:00.

    Could you guys please tell me how to automatically poweroff/poweron the ESXi with all its guest vms?

    I only found some entries for ESXi 5.X or older...

    For the shutdown I would just need a translation of this 3.5 script:
    https://communities.vmware.com/message/1206016#1206016

    Thanks!



  • 2.  RE: Scheduled poweroff and poweron of host and guest vms

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Sep 15, 2016 09:35 AM

    Hi,

    Couple of options, see if this helps:

    If you're  using vCenter server to manage your ESXi host then you can use "Scheduled Task" feature to schedule power-on/off of ESXi host along with configuring  email notification for the task completion.

    Using Schedule Task, you can provide the cluster not just an ESXi host and this requires DPM (Distributed Power Management feature to be enabled, DPM uses Wake-On-LAN, IPMI or ILO to power-on the system).

    If you have any existing option to automatically start & shutdown the ESXi host then you can simply use "VM Startup/Shutdown" feature  for automatically start and stop  of VMs with the Host under ESXi  host configuration/settings.



  • 3.  RE: Scheduled poweroff and poweron of host and guest vms

    Posted Sep 18, 2016 07:21 AM

    Best Option would be DPM and Scheduled tasks. If you don't have a remote a management console as ILO/IMM powering on the server will be a challenge.



  • 4.  RE: Scheduled poweroff and poweron of host and guest vms
    Best Answer

    Posted Sep 18, 2016 11:00 PM

    +1 for vCenter scheduled tasks to power off VMs / Host. Or you could use the built in "Power off VMs with host" feature then just power off the host with the scheduled task which will power off the VMs too

    If you are not licensed for DPM then I would attempt PXE booting the ESXi host to bring it back online at a certain time of day, of course you would need to trigger this from some other system.. Or just manually power if on if required / use ILO (HP servers) / iDRAC (DELL Servers)

    I hope this helps.



  • 5.  RE: Scheduled poweroff and poweron of host and guest vms

    Posted Aug 28, 2018 09:15 AM

    I have esxi 6.7 with no other software from vmware. I mean its is standalone host with many virtual machines running inside. I have ILO access.

    can you suggest me an option to have scheduled start/stop for a host and its virtual machines ?