Managing Power States of a Virtual Machine

The basic power operations for a virtual machine include powering on, powering off, suspending, reset, and hard stop. These power options are analogous to the power operations on a physical computer.

For information about how to change the virtual machine power states, see Configure the Virtual Machine Power States.

Prerequisites

Verify that you have the following privileges:

• VirtualMachine.Interaction.PowerOn
• VirtualMachine.Interaction.PowerOff
• VirtualMachine.Interaction.Suspend
• VirtualMachine.Interaction.Reset

Procedure

1. Navigate to a virtual machine in the inventory.
2. Right-click the virtual machine or click Actions, and select Power.
3. Select a power operation.

   Option	Description
   Power On	Powers on a virtual machine when the virtual machine is stopped.
   Power Off	Powers off a virtual machine. Powering off a virtual machine might cause loss of data within the guest operating system.
   Suspend	Suspends a running virtual machine and leaves it connected to the network. When you resume a suspended virtual machine, the virtual machine continues operating at the same point the virtual machine was at when it was suspended.
   Reset	Restarts the guest operating system. By using this operation, the virtual machine powers off and then powers on. By resetting a virtual machine, you might lose all unsaved information within the guest operating system.
   Hard stop	You can use this operation only when you cannot power off a virtual machine or if a virtual machine becomes unresponsive. When you hard stop a virtual machine, all processes are ended and the virtual machine is powered off. By using this operation, you might lose all unsaved information. If you use the Hard stop operation, vSphere HA restarts the virtual machine.