We just did this for over 250+ Guests and their hosts for a SAN upgrade as well , here's what we did
1) Scripted a graceful shutdown of all guests thru a script and list of guests, pretty simple as stated below 2) Had Virtual center open and saw all guests come offline 3) Once they were all down, we put the hosts in Maintenance mode and issued shutdown commands after that 4) Last Guest was the VC itself, shut it down manually and then directly connected to the host it lived on and maintenance/shut it down 5) Once the SAN maintenance was done , we reversed what we did All in all we had Zero issues doing it this way From: James Rankin [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 9:01 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Shutting down an entire VMWare system The right-click and "Shut Down Guest" does a graceful shutdown. We had to power all our VMs off last night to enable EVC, and I did it with some rapid right-click maneouvres without too many issues (we have 70+ virtual machines here) Shutting down the hosts directly with the VMs running is not a good idea. 2009/11/12 <[email protected]> Greetings! As an emergency call center, we are 24 x 365.25. We have about 30 or so virtual servers in a VMWare ESX 3.5 system. Its datastore is an IBM DS 3400 SAN. The SAN needs a firmware upgrade... The upgrade requires, at one point, shutting down the ESX servers and then shutting down the SAN. (Obviously, with the ESX servers down, the VMWare environment ceases to exist for a period.) What is the least bad way to go about shutting this down? Does one need to log into each virtual server and power it off from the vm's OS (ie, log into Windows, then "Start -> Shut down")? Is it all right to, from the VM managment system, simple right-click each one and select "power down"? Would it be just as "safe" to log into the ESX consoles and shut them down from there first with the VMs running? (We have had our environment survive when the ESX servers shut themselves down due to a room cooling failure, but it was rather rough on the nerves!) Whatever, I'm obviously not looking forward to this - but thanks! -- Richard D. McClary Systems Administrator, Information Technology Group ASPCA(r) 1717 S. Philo Rd, Ste 36 Urbana, IL 61802 [email protected] P: 217-337-9761 C: 217-417-1182 F: 217-337-9761 www.aspca.org <http://www.aspca.org/> The information contained in this e-mail, and any attachments hereto, is from The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals(r) (ASPCA(r)) and is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying or use of the contents of this e-mail, and any attachments hereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify me by reply email and permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout thereof. -- "On two occasions...I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." http://raythestray.blogspot.com _________________________________________________________ This e-mail, including attachments, contains information that is confidential and may be protected by attorney/client or other privileges. This e-mail, including attachments, constitutes non-public information intended to be conveyed only to the designated recipient(s). If you are not an intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized use, dissemination, distribution or reproduction of this e-mail, including attachments, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify me by e-mail reply and delete the original message and any attachments from your system. _________________________________________________________ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
