Shutting down a Virtual Machine running SQL Server

  • We had an impending power outage the other night, and I was in a rush to shutdown all of the VM's running SQL Server before the hosts were brought down. Being cautious (and luckily there was enough time), I went into each VM, went to the Start Menu, and shut down each server.

    In the process I noticed a "Shutdown Guest" option in vSphere, which I've read is akin to shutting down a VM as I described above. I asked our VM guy, and he was telling me that shutting down a VM via the "Shutdown Guest" is a less optimal option than going through the Start menu. (I'm not referring to the "Power off" option, which is like pulling the plug from the wall.)

    Do any of you have an opinion? Because going with the "Shutdown Guest" option would have been much faster than what I did. 

    Thanks,
    --=Chuck

  • your VM guy is right. shutdown guest does not always issue a clean shutdown.

    For these type of situations is normally good to have prepared in advance a powershell script that connects to all required servers and issues its normal shutdown through windows.
    see info in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/stop-computer?view=powershell-6

  • chuck.forbes - Monday, March 5, 2018 9:47 AM

    We had an impending power outage the other night, and I was in a rush to shutdown all of the VM's running SQL Server before the hosts were brought down. Being cautious (and luckily there was enough time), I went into each VM, went to the Start Menu, and shut down each server.

    In the process I noticed a "Shutdown Guest" option in vSphere, which I've read is akin to shutting down a VM as I described above. I asked our VM guy, and he was telling me that shutting down a VM via the "Shutdown Guest" is a less optimal option than going through the Start menu. (I'm not referring to the "Power off" option, which is like pulling the plug from the wall.)

    Do any of you have an opinion? Because going with the "Shutdown Guest" option would have been much faster than what I did. 

    Thanks,
    --=Chuck

    from the cmd prompt on any machine in the same network you can issue a remote shutdown using

    shutdown /s /m \\ComputerNameOrIPAddress  

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    "Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

  • Both of those shutdown suggestions are very much appreciated. If I encounter anything worthy of posting here after experimenting with them, I will do so. Thanks for the help.

    --=Chuck

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