ESX Server Shutdown automatically On Every Sunday at Night ?

[ambarish27]

Dear All,

We have installed VMware ESX Server 3i as “Base OS”

on 2 IBM rack mounted server of

series X3550.

First Esx Server contain one Cent OS 5.1 Linux Virtual

Machifne : Server role is File Server

Second Esx Server contain one Cent OS 5.1 Linux Virtual Machine : Server role is Mail Server

From last 4 Sundays. First ESX Server ( File Serve gets

shutdown automatically ).

This happens every Sunday nighat at around 11:30.

I had check the setting with VMware Infrastructure client ,

but I didn’t find any settings regarding Shutdown the machine at a particular

date.

When you will come at next morning you have to on the

machine Power manually .

Both the ESX severs having Power Supply through UPS.

But only First Esx( which contain file servers ) get

shutdown on every Sunday automatically.

Even I am unable to trace the logs beacuse after shutdown

the machine automatically the old logs get override.

Will you suggest me how can diagnose this issue.

Thanks in Advance

Ambarish

System Admin

Passion for Virtualization

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Welcome to the forums. I have moved your ESXi question to the ESXi forum.

Is ESXi getting shutdown every sunday or is it the VM that is getting shutdown? If it is the VM do you use a SAN/iSCSI/NFS server? If so does something happen to them every sunday?

If it is ESXi then redirect your logs using a remote log server so that you can look at a history of what is happening.

Do you know what is happening every sunday? Backups? AntiVirus? etc.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

[jbrazio]

For your explanation it seems that what gets shutdown is the Virtual Machine and not the ESX host server.

If so.. please check the crontab for any scheduled shutdown command or any other type of scheduled operations on sunday.

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[ambarish27]

Hello Edward,

The databackup performed on every night not only on sunday.

And very important thing is that we have done the setting in ESX Server that when ESX Servers goes down,

first VM first be poweoff before 60 sec then the ESX Server will be poweroff.

Same settings also done for startup when Esx Servers start VM machine get start autmatically after 60 Sec.

You need not to Poweon or Poweroff VM for startup or shutdown.

[ambarish27]

Hello jbrazio, I will try to rediect the log of esx server on another machine.i will try & let you know.

Thanks.. 

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I had a similar problem and my logs showed that it was my UPS that had issues.... causing the power off of the node in the cluster. To find that I had to use the hardware logs not the boot/system logs. WHat servers are you using? Do they have hardware logs at all?

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

[dinnu]

I assume the ESXi host is shutting down every Sunday. Can you if anyone of you have scheduled any VMware Infrastruture Updates at the point of time. This update can be scheduled on any machine where VI client and VI update is installed and the option in VI Update --> "Updates" tab called "Automatically check for recommended updates" is enabled at that time.

If it is enabled for the host which is shutting down, try disabling it.

Just a thought, it might help.