Stop a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine - Ansible module vmware_guest_powerstate

How to automate the gracefully use guest shutdown and forcefully power off to change the power state from Powered On to Powered Off of the virtual machine guest “myvm” using Ansible Playbook and vmware_guest_powerstate module.

May 17, 2022

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How to Stop a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine with Ansible?

I’m going to show you a live demo and some simple Ansible code. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

Ansible Stop a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine

community.vmware.vmware_guest_powerstate
Manages power states of virtual machines in vCenter

Let’s talk about the Ansible module vmware_guest_powerstate. The full name is community.vmware.vmware_guest_powerstate, which means that is part of the collection of modules to interact with VMware, community-supported. It manages power states of virtual machines in vCenter.

Parameters

hostname string / username string / password string / datacenter string / validate_certs boolean - connection details
state string - present / powered-off / powered-on / reboot-guest / restarted / shutdown-guest / suspended
force boolean - no/yes
answer string - A list of questions to answer, should one or more arise while waiting for the task to be complete.

The following parameters are useful in order to Start a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine using the module vmware_guest_powerstate. First of all, we need to establish the connection with VMware vSphere or VMware vCenter using a plethora of self-explicative parameters: hostname, username, password, datacenter, and validate_certs. Once the connection is successfully established you could specify the desired power state, in this case “shutdown-guest” to gracefully ask the guest operating system to shutdown or “powered-off” to turn off the virtual machine guest. You could also force the power state to change using the force parameter, default disabled.

demo

How to Stop a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine with Ansible. I’m going to show you how to Stop the Virtual Machine named “myvm” from the power state “Powered On” to the power state “Powered Off” using Ansible Playbook. I’m going to try first the “shutdown-guest” operation to gracefully ask the guest operating system to shut down than the “powered-off” to forcefully turn off the virtual machine guest.

code

vm_stop.yml

---
- name: stop vm demo
  hosts: localhost
  become: false
  gather_facts: false
  collections:
    - community.vmware
  pre_tasks:
    - include_vars: vars.yml
  tasks:
    - name: guest shutdown
      vmware_guest_powerstate:
        hostname: "{{ vcenter_hostname }}"
        username: "{{ vcenter_username }}"
        password: "{{ vcenter_password }}"
        validate_certs: "{{ vcenter_validate_certs }}"
        name: "{{ vm_name }}"
        state: shutdown-guest
        state_change_timeout: 120
      register: shutdown
      ignore_errors: true
    - name: poweroff
      vmware_guest_powerstate:
        hostname: "{{ vcenter_hostname }}"
        username: "{{ vcenter_username }}"
        password: "{{ vcenter_password }}"
        validate_certs: "{{ vcenter_validate_certs }}"
        name: "{{ vm_name }}"
        state: powered-off
      when: shutdown.failed

vars.yml

---
vcenter_hostname: "vmware.example.com"
vcenter_datacenter: "vmwaredatacenter"
vcenter_validate_certs: false
vcenter_username: "[email protected]"
vcenter_password: "MySecretPassword123"
vm_name: "myvm"

inventory

localhost

execution

$ ansible-playbook vm_stop.yml 
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [stop vm demo] *******************************************************************************
TASK [include_vars] *******************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [guest shutdown] *****************************************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "instance": {"annotation": "", "current_snapshot": null, "customvalues": {}, "guest_consolidation_needed": false, "guest_question": null, "guest_tools_status": "guestToolsNotRunning", "guest_tools_version": "0", "hw_cluster": "prod-cluster", "hw_cores_per_socket": 1, "hw_datastores": ["Datastore"], "hw_esxi_host": "vmware.example.com", "hw_eth0": {"addresstype": "assigned", "ipaddresses": null, "label": "Network adapter 1", "macaddress": "00:50:56:a5:c4:8a", "macaddress_dash": "00-50-56-a5-c4-8a", "portgroup_key": null, "portgroup_portkey": null, "summary": "VM Network"}, "hw_files": ["[Datastore] myvm/myvm.vmx", "[Datastore] myvm/myvm.nvram", "[Datastore] myvm/myvm.vmsd", "[Datastore] myvm/vmware.log", "[Datastore] myvm/myvm.vmdk"], "hw_folder": "/vmwaredatacenter/vm/myvm", "hw_guest_full_name": null, "hw_guest_ha_state": null, "hw_guest_id": null, "hw_interfaces": ["eth0"], "hw_is_template": false, "hw_memtotal_mb": 2048, "hw_name": "lberton-ansible-provision", "hw_power_status": "poweredOff", "hw_processor_count": 1, "hw_product_uuid": "42250dd5-2672-1d32-7898-ad430028e696", "hw_version": "vmx-11", "instance_uuid": "5025e482-f138-b482-a027-0a868ff4bcf3", "ipv4": null, "ipv6": null, "module_hw": true, "moid": "vm-17928", "snapshots": [], "vimref": "vim.VirtualMachine:vm-17928", "vnc": {}}, "msg": "Virtual machine myvm must be in poweredon state for guest shutdown/reboot"}
...ignoring
TASK [poweroff] ***********************************************************************************
changed: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=3    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=1

idempotency

$ ansible-playbook vm_stop.yml 
[WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit
localhost does not match 'all'
PLAY [stop vm demo] *******************************************************************************
TASK [include_vars] *******************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [guest shutdown] *****************************************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "instance": {"annotation": "", "current_snapshot": null, "customvalues": {}, "guest_consolidation_needed": false, "guest_question": null, "guest_tools_status": "guestToolsNotRunning", "guest_tools_version": "0", "hw_cluster": "prod-cluster", "hw_cores_per_socket": 1, "hw_datastores": ["Datastore"], "hw_esxi_host": "vmware.example.com", "hw_eth0": {"addresstype": "assigned", "ipaddresses": null, "label": "Network adapter 1", "macaddress": "00:50:56:a5:c4:8a", "macaddress_dash": "00-50-56-a5-c4-8a", "portgroup_key": null, "portgroup_portkey": null, "summary": "VM Network"}, "hw_files": ["[Datastore] myvm/myvm.vmx", "[Datastore] myvm/myvm.nvram", "[Datastore] myvm/myvm.vmsd", "[Datastore] myvm/vmware.log", "[Datastore] myvm/myvm.vmdk"], "hw_folder": "/vmwaredatacenter/vm/myvm", "hw_guest_full_name": null, "hw_guest_ha_state": null, "hw_guest_id": null, "hw_interfaces": ["eth0"], "hw_is_template": false, "hw_memtotal_mb": 2048, "hw_name": "lberton-ansible-provision", "hw_power_status": "poweredOff", "hw_processor_count": 1, "hw_product_uuid": "42250dd5-2672-1d32-7898-ad430028e696", "hw_version": "vmx-11", "instance_uuid": "5025e482-f138-b482-a027-0a868ff4bcf3", "ipv4": null, "ipv6": null, "module_hw": true, "moid": "vm-17928", "snapshots": [], "vimref": "vim.VirtualMachine:vm-17928", "vnc": {}}, "msg": "Virtual machine myvm must be in poweredon state for guest shutdown/reboot"}
...ignoring
TASK [poweroff] ***********************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=3    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=1

before execution

ansible_module_vmware_guest_powerstate_start before execution

after execution

ansible_module_vmware_guest_powerstate_start after execution

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Recap

Now you know how to Stop a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine with Ansible. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, and Website, X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.