Script to kill a hung vCenter task

[Sureshadmin]

hi,

I'm looking for a script to kill a hung vCenter task. There was esx box(v3.5) which had problems and i has to disconnect and reconnect back in vCenter. When i tried to reconnect the esx box back, the task is in "In progress" state for several hours without timing out. I tried restarting mgmt-vmware and virtual center services in the ESX box but no luck. Can this task be killed via a powershell script or do i have to restart vCenter services?

[LucD]

That depends, some tasks are not cancelable.

You would first have to "get" the task ID and then you can use the Stop-Task cmdlet.

Get-Task -Status "running"

will return all running task and you will have to select the one you're trying to kill.

Then you can use the Stop-Task cmdlet.

$task = Get-Task -Status "Running" | where {$_.Name -eq $tgtName}
Stop-Task -Task $task -Confirm:$false

Here the task is selected based on the name, but there are other properties you could use.

____________

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Twitter: lucd22

[Sureshadmin]

Luc,

You're right. I got a error msg "This task is not cancellable"

So is there a way from powershell to force disconnect a ESX server from VC and de-register all the virtual machines in that esxbox and reconnect it back to the virtual center?

[LucD · Accepted solution]

To remove all VMs on a specific host from the inventory, you can do

Get-VMHost -Name <esxname> | Get-VM | Remove-VM -DeleteFromDisk:$false

To disconnect/connect an ESX(i) host you can do the following.

I assume there are no guests running on the host.

$esxName = <esxname>
Get-VMHost -Name $esxName | Remove-VMHost
Add-VMHost -Name $esxName -Credential (Get-Credential) 

To add the guests back to the inventory, you could eventually use the script from my Raiders of the Lost VMX post.

____________

Blog: LucD notes

Twitter: lucd22

[Sureshadmin]

Thanks much Luc. Finally i disconnected that host from VC.

Is it possible from powershell to retrieve a list of all services running/stopped on a ESX(i) host just like the output of "service --status-all" command?

[LucD]

I'm afraid not witha PowerCLI cmdlet.

This

Get-VMHost $esxName | Get-VMHostService

only returns the status of the ntpd, sshd,vmware-vpxa and vmware-webaccess services.

You can of course use the plink.exe trick to launch the "service --status-all" command and capture the output.

Something like this (provided sudo is set up correctly)

$ESXserver = <esxname>

$User = <esx-account>
$Pswd = <esx-password>
$plink = <PuTTY directory>\Putty\plink.exe"
$plinkoptions = "-v -batch -pw $Pswd"
$cmd1 = "/sbin/service --status-all"

$remoteCommand = "'" + $cmd1 + "'"
$command = $plink + " " + $plinkoptions + " " + $User + "@" + $ESXserver + " " + $remoteCommand

$msg = Invoke-Expression -command $command

____________

Blog: LucD notes

Twitter: lucd22

[Sureshadmin]

Thank you so much.

[baber]

I don't want use it with variable for example when I run :

Get-Task -Status "Running"

it shows follow  :

Name ;                    state:                 complete:

Deploy myvm             running               0%

Now I want use follow command and just type the task name . How can do it ?

Stop-Task -Task

[LucD]

How is this related in any way to the original question in this thread from 2010?

[baber]

No problem . I will open new topic