Performing a graceful shutdown of my Virtual machines

[LGITSupport]

I am currently looking for a way of gracefully shutting down my virtual machines during a power outage. I am running four ESX 3.x servers with Virtual Center Server connected to a SAN which is backed up by a HP5500 UPS. Can I use Rack and Power Manager to shut down the VM guest OS before the ESX server shuts down??? I also have HPSIM and have been trying to use this but with no luck.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

[admin]

Have you looked at the Virtual Machine Startup/Shutdown options?

It's available through the VI Client by clicking on a host then clicking the Configuration tab.

[LGITSupport]

Yes I have looked at these options but this is host based. We have VMotion enabled so what happens if a VM is moved to another host? I was wondering whether they was any way of triggering a shutdown using snmp messages from the UPS.

[espi3030]

I have attached a file that I use, I can't remember the link to where I fould it. Hope this helps.

[RParker]

> We have VMotion enabled so what happens if a VM is moved to another host? I was wondering whether they was any way of triggering a shutdown using snmp messages from the UPS

Not sure about the UPS, but with VC 2.5 you can vmotion a VM and the startup/shutdown settings are retained between host transfers. Just FYI. This was fixed in 2.5, but not with 2.0.

[LGITSupport]

Thanks for the file.

I am not that familiar with VMware, so am not sure what to do with this file you sent me!!

[espi3030]

Connect to your ESX server either with SSH or PUTTY, and upload the file. I placed mine in "/tmp/", then make it executable by root only I believe the command is "chmod 700 then file name". To execute the file do "./filename", keep in mind when you test this it will not prompt you if you want to power down your machines, it will power them down. If you have a Linux/Unix guy in your shop get with him to look the file over and help you out a little.