How does vSphere handle VMs upon shutdown/startup?

[lasinl]

I'm interested in upgrading from the free ESXi 5 to VMware vSphere v5.0 Essentials Kit. Does vSphere automatically pause VMs when it's shutting down? Does it automatically resume VMs upon startup?

[spravtek · Accepted solution]

Yes you can configure the Virtual Machines to start-up/suspend/shutdown automatically in vCenter.

ref. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=850

[TomHowarth]

I am assuming that your VM's are on a locally attached datastore and not shared.  I am pretty sure that the upgrade does not suspend or shutdown VM's and putting your machine into maintenance mode would not help either as that will attempt to vMotion guests, a feature you do not have.

You best bet would be to:

a: make  sure you have a full back up of your VM's (it is always better to be safe than sorry, mistakes and Murphy often happen)

b: do an interactive upgrade and confirm before pressing the install button to "preserve any VMFS partitions"

[TomHowarth]

The original Posts said he was using the Free version of ESXi,  I think it unlikely that they have a copy of vCenter.

[spravtek]

I assumed he was asking if the essentials kit, including vCenter, has this feature ... I might have misunderstood the original post.

[aravinds3107]

If you are going to run on cluster then probablt Auto start fuction is disabled with 5.0 U1 and if you are running free ESXi make sure you have the latest patches updated as the auto start fuction is disable in 5.0 U1 and then got fixed with a patch. read below for more information

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/03/free-esxi-hypervisor-auto-start-breaks-with-50-update-1.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/07/vsphere-hypervisor-auto-start-bug-fixed.html

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/07/clarification-on-the-auto-start-issues-in-vsphere-51-update...