Shutting Down a Virtual Machine

Shut down a virtual machine (VM) to begin an orderly shutdown of the guest operating system.

Shutting down a VM in the everRun Availability Console is similar to pressing the power button on a physical machine, which typically results in an orderly shutdown of the operating system. In some cases, you may need to explicitly enable this feature in the guest operating system. For example:

• For any guest, verify that the power button action is set to shut down the guest operating system and not to hibernate it. If you click Shutdown in the everRun Availability Console for a guest that is set to hibernate, the VM remains in a stopping state and never properly shuts down.
• On some guests, the power button does not shut down the system unless a user is logged on to the operating system. You may be able to update security settings to enable the power button even in the absence of a login session.

• On some minimal server versions of Ubuntu, the acpid package that enables the power button is not included in the default installation. You can manually install this package to enable the power button using the following command (or see the documentation for your guest operating system):

  sudo apt-get install acpid

  For versions of Ubuntu running the desktop, the everRun Availability Console Shutdown button causes the VM's Ubuntu desktop to prompt you with selecting one of three icons: suspend, sleep, or shutdown. To allow the Ubuntu VM to shutdown without the desktop prompts, you must modify the powerbtn file.

  To modify the powerbtn file

  1. In the VM, edit the /etc/acpi/events/powerbtn file.

  2. Comment out these lines:

     event=button[ /]power
     action=/etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh
     

  3. Add these lines:

     event=button/power (PWR.||PBTN)
     action==/sbin/poweroff
     

  4. Issue the following command to restart acpid:

     systemctl restart acpid

See the documentation for your guest operating system to configure the behavior of the system power button, thus enabling the Shutdown button to work in the everRun Availability Console.

To shut down a VM in everRun Availability Console

1. On the Virtual Machines page, select a VM.

2. Click Shutdown in the bottom panel.

   A warning message appears, asking you to confirm the shutdown. Click Yes to shutdown or No to discontinue the shutdown.

If the VM is not responding, you can also Power Off the VM to stop it without properly shutting down the guest operating system.