Operations that change the power state of a vApp or any of its VMs can have different results when initiated from the VMware Cloud Director API than they do when initiated from the VMware Cloud Director HTML5 UI. Understanding these state transitions and the operations that cause them can help you manage vApp and VM resource consumption and readiness.

As seen in the VMware Cloud Director HTML5 UI, a vApp can be Stopped, Running, or Partially Running. A VM can have any of the following states:
  • Powered Off
  • Powered On
  • Suspended
  • Partially Powered On (deployed
  • Partially Suspended (deployed)
The VMware Cloud Director API returns information about VM power state in the Vm object’s status attribute:
Table 1. VM Power States and status Attribute Values
VM Power State Vm Object status attribute value
Powered on 4
Powered off 8
Suspended 3

This simplified diagram covers most of the cases where a vApp contains a single VM. A vApp that contains multiple VMs can report its power state as Partially Running in the VMware Cloud Director HTML5 UI when some VMs are powered on and some are not.

Figure 1. vApp Power State Transitions
A state transition diagarm showing how API operaitons and UI gestures affect the power state of a vApp and the VMs it contains