How to schedule a one-time shutdown of ESX server?

[jforney]

I need to schedule a shutdown of 2 ESX 3.5 servers in the middle of the night. This is a job that only needs to run once, so I don't think cron is the right tool. Something like the AT command but I don't find that in ESX. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

[AntonVZhbankov]

PowerCLI and Windows scheduler, for example.

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MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[jforney]

I have a hard time to believe that this cannot be done from the ESX CLI.

" shutdown -h +600" should work to schedule a 3:00 am shutdown when I leave at 5:00 pm but I wonder if there is a more elegant way to do it.

[jkumhar75]

The more elegant way to do is through the virtual center, you can schedule the task through virtual center and shutdown the ESX server.

Jay

VCP 310,VCP 410,MCSE

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[AntonVZhbankov]

Do you have DRS enabled for these hosts? Are there any VMs running on them?

If not - why at 12:00?

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MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[jforney]

That was my first thought. But the only available options are:

- Change the power state of a virtual machine

- Clone a virtual machine

- Deploy a virtual machine

- Move a virtual machine with vMotion

- Relocate a virtual machine

- Create a virtual machine

- Make a snapshot of a virtual machine

- Add a host

- Export a virtual machine

- Import a machine

Nothing about shutting down a host

[jforney]

The hosts are standalone, no HA or DRS. The guests have all been schedule to shut down from within their OS.

[jkumhar75]

Then the other best option you have is " shutdown -h +600"use this command only.

Jay

VCP 310,VCP 410,MCSE

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[AntonVZhbankov]

You can shutdown all the guests and hosts with one PowerShell script actually.

Run this script against 3 ESX hosts you want to shutdown.

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn" -and $_.Guest.State -eq "Running"} | Shutdown-VMGuest
Start-Sleep -Seconds 300
Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"} | Stop-VM -RunAsync
Start-Sleep -Seconds 60
Get-VMHost | Stop-VMHost -RunAsync

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MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[jforney]

Thanks, I am going have a look at the PowerShell option.