ESXi - Shutting down the cluster​ - Maintenance or Re-location

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.

Points to consider before attempting to shutdown a vSphere Cluster running atop AOS:

1. Cluster health and Resiliency (Prism Dashboard)
2. vCenter hosted on the same AOS cluster or outside?
3. Any on-going / running protection domain replication?
4. User Virtual Machines shutdown
5. CVM – Controller virtual Machines shutdown
6. 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

1. Shut down all the VMs in the Nutanix cluster.
2. 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.
3. Stop all Nutanix Files cluster VMs if applicable
4. Stop the Nutanix cluster.
5. Shut down each node in the cluster.
6. 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:

Shutting Down a ESXi / AOS Cluster