Chapter 6. Administrative Tasks

6.1. Shutting Down a Virtual Machine

You can turn off a virtual machine using Shutdown or Power Off. Shutdown gracefully shuts down a virtual machine. Power Off executes a hard shutdown. A graceful shutdown is usually preferable to a hard shutdown.

Note

If an exclamation point appears next to the virtual machine, a snapshot deletion process has failed, and you may not be able to restart the machine after shutting it down. Try to delete the snapshot again and ensure that the explanation mark disappears before shutting down the virtual machine. See Section 6.9.4, “Deleting a Snapshot” for more information.

Procedure

  1. Click ComputeVirtual Machines and select a running virtual machine.
  2. Click Shutdown.
  3. Optionally in the Administration Portal, enter a Reason for shutting down the virtual machine in the Shut down Virtual Machine(s) confirmation window. This allows you to provide an explanation for the shutdown, which will appear in the logs and when the virtual machine is powered on again.

    Note

    The virtual machine shutdown Reason field will only appear if it has been enabled in the cluster settings. For more information, see Explanation of Settings and Controls in the New Cluster and Edit Cluster Windows in the Administration Guide.

  4. Click OK in the Shut down Virtual Machine(s) confirmation window.

If the virtual machine gracefully shuts down, the Status of the virtual machine changes to Down. If the virtual machine does not gracefully shut down, click the down arrow next to Shutdown and then click Power Off to execute a hard shutdown.