My question is 2 parts.
1. How damaging is it when you right click on a VM and select power-off when the VM is not logged in and powered on?
2. Is there any ESX VM support for auto VM shutdown when a power outage occurs. I would assume not since the UPS would have to control that but there might be some third party management tool that would prioritize the order of VM shutdowns?
Any thoughts??
Powering off a VM carries the same risk as a physical machine. 99% of the time it will be fine.
I have used Network Shutdown with a UPS and when the power outage was detected using the VM automatic startup and shutdown I was able to shutdown down all the VM's cleanly as the ESX server goes down. This was with ESX 2.x and the rules change with HA and DRS but could be done