Virtual machine should be shut down from within. However, occasionally there is a need to shut down the virtual machine from the Administration Portal.

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform provides for an orderly shutdown if the guest tools are installed on the virtual machine. Shutdown of virtual machines should be planned after due consideration, preferably at times that will least impact users.

All users should be logged off of a Windows virtual machine before shutting them down. If any users are still logged in, the virtual machine remains on with a Powering Off status in the Administration Portal. The virtual machine requires manual intervention to shut it down completely because the following Windows message is displayed on the virtual machine:

Other people are logged on to this computer. Shutting down Windows might cause them to lose data. Do you want to continue shutting down?

If a virtual machine cannot be properly shut down, since, for example, the operating system is not responsive, you might need to force a shutdown, which is equivalent to pulling out the power cord of a physical machine.

Pausing a virtual machine puts it into Hibernate mode, where the virtual machine state is preserved. Applications running in RAM are written to the hard drive and CPU usage is zero.