VM startup/shutdown config lost after VMotion

[MR-T]

If you set the virtual machine startup order, should it remain in place when you migrate a vm away or back again?

I only noticed this as I set a couple of machines to automatically start each time, but then I needed to migrate them to another host.

When I returned to the configuration > virtual machine startup/shutdown page, everything was set to manual start.

[sbeaver]

I noticed this when I checked on things after DRS had done it thing over time. This brought up the debate on Autostart and stop with HA/DRS

[MR-T]

So basically there's no point in this feature, unless you're running everything on a single host don't bother using it.

I find this hard to believe, it's not a new feature and I'm sure I had it working in 2.5 with VMotion.

[sbeaver]

With 2.5 I thought it got funky because say the machine you had set to start second on one ESX hosts gets vmotioned to the other host and now you have 2 VM's set to start second. The vmx files never got changed

[MR-T]

Maybe, it's been a while since I looked at 2.x

But it would remember to start the machine automatically.

I don't really care about the order (although it would be nice). I just want all my vm's to power up when the host comes back. I don't have HA on this setup.

[sbeaver]

Maybe we need to submit a bug or SR. This pretty important and Massimo came accross a show stopper for him also

[MR-T]

Cheers Steve, I'll raise an SR.

[mattpound · Accepted solution]

It appears now not to be a setting in the VMX files as in ESX 2.5.x but an ESX host setting.

It seems to get stored in /etc/vmware/hostd/vmAutoStart.xml and the best was to manipulate this file appears to be through vimsh.

So I've knocked up a little test script (very basic DO NOT use in prodcution) that sets any powered on machines to power on at startup.

This could be fired very hour using cron and could be used later on as workaround if VMware don't supply a fix.

#!/bin/bash

vmlist=`grep objID /etc/vmware/hostd/vmInventory.xml | sed -e 's/ /tmp/vimCOM.sh

fi

done

vimsh -x /tmp/vimCOM.sh -n

[MR-T]

Thankyou darling

[mattpound]

No problem. Try it with care.

[avbohemen]

What's even worse: even if you configure auto startup/shutdown and don't vmotion any VM's, the autostartup configuration only works one time, and then gets disabled:

vmAutoStart.xml:

turns to false after an ESX host reboot! (tested with 3.0.2)

[CiscoKid]

I am also experiencing issues with auto startup with 3.02. I did a clean install without formatting the existing VMFS volume. I ensured that I configured everything correctly and after several reboots have given up and at a point were I may need to consider wiping out the VMFS volume all together. Any ideas to save the time of having to move the VMs off of the VMFS for a rebuild?

[TWashington]

Yea, we're having the same problem on our ESX 3.0.2. We're not using VMotion though.

We're using a script to auto-start our vms. Does anyone know how to get the gui to work?