In this post we will go through the steps required to shut down and power off all hosts in a VMware vSphere cluster on AOS to perform maintenance or other tasks such as physical hardware relocation.
Note: Upgrade to the most recent version of NCC before proceeding with the following steps.
Points to consider before attempting to shutdown a vSphere Cluster running atop AOS:
- Cluster health and Resiliency (Prism Dashboard)
- vCenter hosted on the same AOS cluster or outside?
- Any on-going / running protection domain replication?
- User Virtual Machines shutdown
- CVM – Controller virtual Machines shutdown
- Access to ESXi Hosts (SSH & ESXi Host Client)
Steps to Shutdown
SSH to a Nutanix Controller VM (user : nutanix) and run an NCC health check prior to the scheduled shutdown. If there are any errors or failures, check the relevant KB or contact Nutanix Support.
ncc health_checks run_all
- Shut down all the VMs in the Nutanix cluster.
- Verify if vCenter VM is running on the same Nutanix cluster that you're shutting down. If so, vCenter VM must be shut down, too.
- Stop all Nutanix Files cluster VMs if applicable
- Stop the Nutanix cluster.
- Shut down each node in the cluster.
- After completing maintenance or other tasks, power on the nodes and start the cluster.
Above are the high-level steps required to shutdown a vSphere & AOS Cluster.
For more detailed information and tips - please visit the following: