Nutanix AHV Cluster Shutdown, Start up Procedure

Nutanix AHV Hypervisor

Best practice procedure to shutdown / stop / start Nutanix AHV cluster, Nutanix acropolis cluster need to stopped / shutdown in case of periodic maintenance or hardware relocation or any down time etc. You need to follow the predefined Nutanix AHV cluster stop / shutdown procedure.

This is very rare activity to shutdown / power off / stop the Nutanix Acropolis AHV cluster in production environment. If need to do some maintenance activity on specific Nutanix Controller-VM CVM / AHV host / node, then you have an option to put your Nutanix CVM / AHV into maintenance mode to do maintenance activity.

Read Also: How to Shutown / stop / start Nutanix vSphere Cluster

Shutdown / Stop Nutanix Cluster

Lets follow the Nutanix best practice procedure to stop / shutdown Nutanix AHV cluster using Nutanix Prism Web console and Nutanix acli Command:

Step 1: Log in ( SSH) to Nutanix Prism in web browser

Note : Check Nutanix AHV cluster “Data Resiliency” status it must be “OK” if NOT, please wait until it turns “OK” Nutanix has auto healing system.

If does not turn “OK”, Please Log a case with nutanix or hardware vendor support.

Step 2: Pre-check the Nutanix acropolis cluster health from Prism web console

Option 2.1. Go to the Menu > Health > Action> Run NCC checks > All Checks (*) > Run

Nutanix Run Health check

Optional 2.2 you can also run Nutanix cluster health check ( Nutanix NCC ) from Command line interface (CLI). SSH any Nutanix CVM (Nutanix Controller VM) of Nutanix AHV cluster and run following command and Wait until run successfully.

cvm$ ncc health_checks run_all

If something is alarming critical alert then Contact to nutanix or hardware vendor support if everything is fine go ahead to step 3.

Step 3 : Now you have to shutdown all guest VMs ( Windows and Linux )

Note: Don’t shutdown Nutanix CVM ( Nutanix Controller VM )

To shutdown Nutnanix Guest VMs you have two options


Option 1 : Through Nutanix Prism Web console

Power off guest VMs from Prism

Option 2 Through you can shutdown all Guest VMs from single Nutanix acli command

Just SSH to any Nutanix CVM (Nutanix Controller VM) and run following command:

CVM$ acli vm.shutdown *   |For soft shutdown|
OR 
cvm$ acli vm.off *        |For hard shutdown|


Note : Above command will not shutdown Nutanix CVM.

Now exit from acli command interface and proceed to run next command

Step 4: Now you have to Stop / shutdown Nutanix cluster through following command:

CVM$ cluster stop

Command will prompt confirmation type “YES” to proceed to shutdown Nutanix cluster. It will take up to 1 minute.

Step 5: Now shutdown Nutanix CVM ( Nutanix Controller VM)

SSH to Nutanix CVM ( Nutanix Controller VM) one by one of Nutanix cluster to run following command:

cvm$ sudo cvm_shutdown -P now

Note: Always use the Nutanix cvm_shutdown -P now command to shutdown the Controller VM. The cvm_shutdown -P now command notifies the cluster that the Nutanix Controller VM is going to unavailable / unreachable.

Note : After all Nutanix CVM goes shutdown then you can go ahead for step 6

Step 6: Now shutdown Nutanix AHV node, one by one through IPMI or SSH

There is two option to shutdown the Nutanix AHV host

Option 1 Through IPMI web interface

Browse Nutanix IPMI IP address in chrome / Firefox / Opera / Safari / IE etc.

Go to Remote control > Power control > Power Off Server - Orderly Shutdown

Option 2 You can use Command line also

SSH to each AVH host one by one of Nutanix AHV cluster and run following command:

host# shutdown -P now

Confirmation : To check Nutanix AHV Host Power Status, just ping all Nutanix AHV host IP addresses.

Start Nutanix Cluster

Lets start the Nutanix AHV Hosts / Nodes and Nutanix Acropolis cluster to follow the Nutanix best practice procedure to start the Nutanix AHV cluster:

Step 1: Manually Power-on Nutanix Hosts / Nodes

Option 1.1. We can power on the Nutanix AHV Host / Node physically press the power button in front of the nodes.

Option 1.2. We can power on the Nutanix AHV nodes to browser the IPMI Console to power it on.

Before the start the nutanix acropolis cluster need to wait 10-15 minute to boot up the all Nutanix Nodes ( included AHV host and CVM) and ping all AHV host and CVMs.

Note : Nutanix CVM boots automatically after Nutanix AHV hosts booted successfully.

Step 2: SSH in to any Nutanicx CVM to start Nutanix acropolis cluster by following command:

cvm$ cluster start

To check Nutanix cluster services status to run following command:

cvm$ cluster status

Step 3: Now do power on all guest VMs from Prism or command line

Option 3.1 Open Prism > Home > VM > select VM > click on “Power on”

Nutanix Guest VMs power on
Guest VMs power on

Option 3.2 You can use single Nutanix acli command to power-on the all guest VMs by following command from any Nutanix CVM:

cvm$ acli vm.on *

Step 4: Now you can check your all Guest VMs power status.

Hopefully, Now you are become expert to stop / shutdown / start the Nutanix acropolis cluster without any hesitation.

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