Automatically power on ESX(i) VM’s on startup

For quite some time now, we had this problem with a client where his virtual machines had to be started manually when his ESXi server stopped. Which, due to an electrically challenged infrastructure, happened every other two weeks.

Virtualization isn’t my cup of tea. I know the basics (create a VM, change settings, start / stop) and most of what I know is from Virtualbox, not VMWare (Virtualbox is free, so yeah…)

Today, however, I decided to finally read the manual (for shame, I know) and to my shock, it’s actually really simple to make the virtual machines start up with the server, when it boots.

How it’s done

  1. Open the Infrastructure Client
  2. Click on the Server you want to manage
  3. Open the “Configuration” tab.
  4. Under the configuration tab, go to the “Software section”. Click Virtual Machine Startup / Shutdown
  5. Cilck “Properties (top right corner)
  6. A new windows opens. Enable Allow virtual machines to start and stop automatically with the system.
  7. Finally, you’ll need to choose which virtual machines will start up automatically. Select the virtual machine and keep clicking “Move Up” until it’s under the “Automatic Startup” section. Under “Startup” it’ll now say Enabled.

I hope this guide is of use for other absentminded people like me, who should really start to RTFM. 

Discover more from PowerUser Guide

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading