So I've been googling for a couple of hours now and not finding an answer to this. Is there a way to start VMs or Vapps from the CLI of a guest? The closest I can find is PowerCLI, but from everything I can see, that is Windows only. Everything I've found online about starting Vapps shows how to start them from the vsphere client or vsphere web client, which is not what I am looking for. Am I missing something here?
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Starting VMs and/or Vapps programmatically?
- Thread starter danswartz
- Start date
Hm, what version of ESXi are you using, 5? 4?
From what I understand, the concept is the same for any type of hypervisor whether it's type-1 or 2, whether it's virtualbox, VMware, Xen, HyperV or otherwise: the guest VM doesn't know of it's host other than what's exposed through the guest-tools drivers. it doesn't appear that you can do anything other than shut the guest down through, well, from within the guest. starting up HAS to come from the host.
I suppose the other way would be to script something up on the guest where you would:
- ssh to the IP of the host ESXi server
- run the "vim-cmd vmsvc/power.shutdown 2" command, where "2" is the ID of the VM you wanna shut down.
.. unless you still meant to programmatically be able to startup/shutdown vm's from the unix terminal of the ESXi server?
From what I understand, the concept is the same for any type of hypervisor whether it's type-1 or 2, whether it's virtualbox, VMware, Xen, HyperV or otherwise: the guest VM doesn't know of it's host other than what's exposed through the guest-tools drivers. it doesn't appear that you can do anything other than shut the guest down through, well, from within the guest. starting up HAS to come from the host.
I suppose the other way would be to script something up on the guest where you would:
- ssh to the IP of the host ESXi server
- run the "vim-cmd vmsvc/power.shutdown 2" command, where "2" is the ID of the VM you wanna shut down.
.. unless you still meant to programmatically be able to startup/shutdown vm's from the unix terminal of the ESXi server?
peanuthead
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Are you looking for Linux based options?
peanuthead
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To power on a virtual machine from the command line:
List the inventory ID of the virtual machine with the command:
vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms |grep <vm name>
Note: The first column of the output shows the vmid.
Check the power state of the virtual machine with the command:
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate <vmid>
Power-on the virtual machine with the command:
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on <vmid>
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1038043
List the inventory ID of the virtual machine with the command:
vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms |grep <vm name>
Note: The first column of the output shows the vmid.
Check the power state of the virtual machine with the command:
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate <vmid>
Power-on the virtual machine with the command:
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on <vmid>
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1038043
peanuthead
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The only reason I knew what to search for is because I knew the command already. (I don't remember all of the switches/options though.) Glad this is what you were looking for.