Shut Down a Virtual Machine

You can shut down a virtual machine from the VM menu or from the toolbar. When you use the VM menu, you can select a hard or soft power option.

You are not required to power off a virtual machine that is running on the local host system before you exit Workstation Pro. You can exit Workstation Pro and leave the virtual machine running in the background. See Closing Virtual Machines and Exiting Workstation Pro.

When virtual machines are in a folder, you can perform batch power operations. See Using Folders to Manage Virtual Machines.

Procedure

• To select a power option when you shut down the virtual machine, select the virtual machine and select VM > Power.

  Option	Description
  Power Off	(Hard option) Workstation Pro powers off the virtual machine abruptly with no consideration for work in progress.
  Shut Down Guest	(Soft option) Workstation Pro sends a shut-down signal to the guest operating system. An operating system that recognizes the signal shuts down gracefully. Not all guest operating systems respond to a shut-down signal from Workstation Pro. If the guest operating system does not respond to the signal, shut down from the guest operating system as you would a physical machine.

• To shut down the virtual machine from the toolbar, select the virtual machine and click the stop button.
  The stop power control setting that is configured for the virtual machine determines whether Workstation Pro performs a hard or soft power off operation. The configured behavior appears in a tooltip when you mouse over the button.
• To shut down a virtual machine that is suspended, select the virtual machine and click VM > Power > Power Off.