Shutdown non responding VMware Guest

Posted: September 10, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Admin, IT Survival, VMWare | Leave a comment

Sometimes a VMware Guest can get stuck shutting down and will show 95% on the GUI console.

You need to shut this down via the CLI if this is the case.

See this post for the basics of how to do this tip use

vmware-cmd /path to vmx file   stop (hard)

If you get an error and the server will not shut down then a more radical process is needed.

Your error may be something like this

VMControl error -999: Unknown error: SoapError: ServerFaultCode(0) : (Operation failed since another task is in progress.)

Logon to the server.

cd /tmp

vm-support -x

This will produce a list of currently running VMware servers make a note of the vmid

vm-support -X vmid_no from above

Answer no to the first question and then yes to everything else.  This will create dump files and backups, the net result though is that it will shut the server down.

Remember to delete all the bits of folders and files from the tmp directory.

Vmware CLI Commands

Posted: September 10, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Admin, IT Survival, VMWare | 1 Comment

The world of VMware is so cool.  Sometime though you need access under the covers to do various tasks.

VMWare has a hole load of command at the Linux level.  Be warned these can do some nasty things so be very careful.

SSH on to the VMware server.  If you don’t have SSH access download the Veam Root Access that will allows SSH access the server.

A list of commands these are for v3.5 only:

vmware-cmd is the command to runn followed by many commands, the list is the ones that I have used

vmware-cmd -l     – shows all the virtual machines running and the vmx file locations

vmware-cmd /path to vmx file   getstate – returns the state of the guest

vmware-cmd /path to vmx file   stop –  powers the guest down

vmware-cmd /path to vmx file   stop hard – as stop except dumps the server

vmware-cmd /path to vmx file   start

vmware-cmd /path to vmx file   reset

vdf -h – will show the disk usage of the virtual guests

Commands for vsphere4 :

Will be here in a few days