With ESX 3.X it was possible to use APC's PowerChute to shutdown the hypervisor when there is a power failure. However, because there is no service console in ESXi 3.5, I'm wondering how to do this. Certainly VMWare and all its OEM partners didn't forget about this important part of server management, but all my searches on this topic turn up nothing so far.
So, the question is: how do you shut down an ESXi 3.5 Update 2 hypervisor when the power is out?
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Hi BogdanSUA,
Unfortunately, that isn't an option in my environment. There is no other physical machine. If I am limited to using PowerChute within the guest operating systems running on ESXi 3.5, then I have a new problem: how do I get access to the serial port from within an ESXi guest operating system? As far as I know, the serial ports can only be used for hypervisor logging.
Hmmm, you might be able to get away with a SNMP network card for your UPS.
If you created another VM as a powerchute server, and it monitored the UPS, you could script the PowerChute VM to shutdown all the other VMs, and then script to shutdown the ESX server. The only thing is, that course of action will bring down your PowerChute VM and it might not be graceful....that's why it would be best if it was a seperate dedicated VM.
Okay, that could work, with a few improvements. I think the solution should go as follows:
1. Install an SNMP network card in the UPS
2. Create a small VM (Linux) to monitor the UPS with PowerChute
3. Have the small VM issue a shutdown request to the ESXi host.
4. Configure the ESXi host to gracefully shut down the guest operating systems when the host is shut down, ensuring that the small VM goes down last and comes up first.
Alternatively:
1. Install an SNMP network card in the UPS
2. Configure each guest operating system to run PowerChute and shut itself down when the power fails.
Thanks for helping.
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by: BogdanSUAPosted on 2008-08-19 at 13:50:06ID: 22263734
SOunds like you'll need another physical host to run a script to shutdown your VMs and then use the remote command line functionality to shutdown your ESX 3i box