How to – kill / power off a virtual machine using esxcli command

If you want to power off or kill a virtual machine running on an ESXi host you can do this using the following esxcli command:

• connect a console to your ESXi host (eg. SSH or ESXi Shell)

To get a list of all VMs running on the host use this command:

esxcli vm process list

The list contains: World ID, Process ID, VMX Cartel ID, UUID, display name and the path to the vmx config file:

To kill / power off the virtual machine use the following command:

esxcli vm process kill -type=xxxx – world-id=yyyyy

for -type=xxxx use: soft, hard or force
for world-id=yyyy use the World ID listed in the command above (eg. World ID 39731 for the example VM “Cold”)
Some information about the three possible shutdown methods:
soft = prefer this if you want to shut down “softly”
hard = equal to an immediate shutdown
force = hard kill of the VM

How to – kill a running virtual machine process with ESXTOP

 

Sometimes it is necessary to kill a running virtual machine process (eg. if there is locked file).
Of course you can do this with the kill command: “kill -9 PID” …or you can do it in ESXTOP!
.) run ESXTOP
.) press “c” to open the CPU view
.) press “f” to add/remove fields
.) press “c” to add the field LWID Leader World Id (World Group ID)
.) press “k” to open the kill prompt:

.) type in the LWID from the target virtual machine
.) ENTER
.) wait 30 seconds and take care that the process is no longer listed