Bringing down a cluster is a scary thing, isn’t it? What if it does not come back? What if this is not the right sequence? What if you make a typo? What if...

Unfortunately, no matter how much one frets the task there is always a point when a cluster must be powered off. We thought we would hold your hand along the way at least figuratively speaking and provide you with a guide on the process so that the next time you consider that pesky network maintenance or emulation of DR or prepare for a site power outage or a re-location you would be all prepared for the task.

In this post we will cover the process for the vSphere based clusters:

Upgrade to the most recent version of NCC before proceeding with the following steps.

1. For Metro Availability (Data Protection) Disable Metro Availability and Verify no Async DR replications are in progress.
2. Shutting down guest VMs (Do not shut down the Nutanix Controller VMs.)
3. Shutting down vCenter VM (if applicable).
4. Shutting down Nutanix Files (file server) VMs.
5. Stopping the Nutanix cluster.
6. Shutting down each node in the cluster.
7. Power on the nodes and cluster after a shutdown.
8. Start the cluster.

For detailed instructions and commands please refer to KB-1438 Shutting down Nutanix cluster running VMware vSphere for maintenance or relocation.

KB-4429 Nutanix Files - Graceful Shutdown of a Nutanix Cluster.

Looking for the process for a different hypervisor? Try this KB-5010 How to Shut Down a Cluster and Start it Again?