Auto Power on Virtual Guest Machines after ESX Host Restarted

[gunas]

Hello!

Where can i set each Vm Guest to auto power on when my ESX Host was restarted ?

I have ESX 3.01-.

Thanks!

[einstein-a-go-g]

It's done via VC2.0.

Select the server, Select the Configuration tab

Option Virtual machine Startup/Shutdown

[thorsten_tritts]

It's done via VC2.0.

Select the server, Select the Configuration tab

Option Virtual machine Startup/Shutdown

Addition :

Move your virtual machine into the "Automatic Startup" area in wished order. I suggest you to change the default option for shutdown actions to "Shut down operation system" as well.

[esiebert7625]

Be careful with using auto startups, if you happen to restart the mgmt-vmware service on the ESX host all your VM's power off. It's happened to me twice now.

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=75462&tstart=0

Page 155 of the admin guide talks about setting this up...

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_admin_guide.pdf

[gunas]

Must i put "Start and Stop Virtual Machine with the System" Enable ?

[esiebert7625]

Yes you must enable it before it will work. You can also un-check that if you temporarily do not want to use it.

[gunas]

Yesterday one of my ESX host was accidentaly unpluged for the Power cable , when the ESx was powered on again all host put on it still powered off and i had to power on each one manually.

I need to configure the ESX Host in order to start auto all the Vmguest if my ESX host was restarted (NO if the mgmt service is restarted).

[jdaunt]

One additional point, if you have DRS enabled in a VMotion cluster, the Autostart parameters will no longer be configured.

[esiebert7625]

or if you use HA you don't really need them since your VM's will automatically fail-over to other ESX hosts in case of failure.

[timw18 · Accepted solution]

You can still manage the Priority that the machines should have with HA by editing the settings on the cluster and going to Virtual Machine Options where you have options for Restart Priority and Isolation Response.

[ben5]

Thank you very much for this post.