How to force shutdown VMware Virtual Machine

In this blogpost, we’ll see how you can shutdown forcefully an unresponsive or hung VMware virtual machine using esxcli command-line.

In this case scenario, you will not able to shutdown or power off the virtual machine through the vSphere and inside the Guest OS.

Let’s begin with the steps now.

1. SSH into the host where the virtual machine is currently running.
2. Run the command “esxcli vm process list” to get the running VMs details with the World ID.
   

~ # esxcli vm process list
   techyguy.in
   World ID: 256209
   Process ID: 0
   VMX Cartel ID: 245204
   UUID: 42 1c a4 bf f7 c3 a4-34 d3 e3 9b 54 03 6f 15
   Display Name: techyguy.in
   Config File: /vmfs/volumes/5aa81gec-5b1290ed-f09c-48df37289554/techyguy.in

3. Now Run the command ‘esxcli vm process kill -t=”[force|soft|hard]” -w=256209‘.

This way you can kill the VM process and make them alive again.

Also see

• All About VMware vSAN HCL Database Update – TechyGuy
• VMware vSAN Features By Version Matrix – TechyGuy
• All You Need To Know About VMware vSAN | vSAN 6.7 – TechyGuy