Can I reboot a host without shutting down the VMs?

[TwistedHelixis]

Hi, Whenever I need to reboot a host (updates normally) I always shutdown the VM's first and then reboot the host.

 

If I don't do the above will the VM's shut themselves down before the host reboots or should I shutdown the VMs first?

[Jawloms]

If you reboot the host, the VMs should pause themselves, and then unpause themselves again once the host is back up.

[sted]

its in the hosts vm settings you can set it to save state, shutdown and i think turn off when you reboot the host. Personally i shut them down myself so i know its done but thats just me being paranoid

 

[TwistedHelixis]

I am also paranoid. So if set to shutdown does the host wait long enough for all VMs to shutdown before starting its reboot phase?

[sted]

I am also paranoid. So if set to shutdown does the host wait long enough for all VMs to shutdown before starting its reboot phase?

a qualified yes but if the vm does something weird not always

[Fazza]

In my experience, it's quicker to shutdown the VMs and then shutdown the Host and restart the VMs when the host has come back up. If we need to reboot a host overnight for whatever reason then we just do exactly that and set it to reboot at 'silly o'clock' when nobody in their right mind should be online *touch-wood* 99% of the time all the VMs come back up OK. Sometimes though I have seen VMs that were powered off on purpose be turned back on after a reboot and sometimes I've seen VMs stuck in a saved state and had to Start them up manually.

[Marci]

Also... depends on the guest OSs and whether they have the relevant VM Tools installed for whatever hypervisor you're using etc.

 

eg: If you have any Linux VMs that don't have the relevant VM Tools installed, they may not go down quietly and will possibly come up in single user mode, requiring a direct console login (for instance).