How to ignore the host PowerButton in ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

While the power button of host was pressed or the iLO send the ACPI shutdown commanded,the ESXi will graceful shutdown.
It is ESXi's expected behavior.

In some case,user want to ignore the hardware Power Button action in the ESXi.

This document provides a solution.

Resolution

There was a system parameter "/Misc/PowerButton" to control the ESXi's behavior.  

# esxcli system settings advanced list -o "/Misc/PowerButton"
   Path: /Misc/PowerButton
   Type: integer
   Int Value: 1
   Default Int Value: 1
   Min Value: 0
   Max Value: 1
   String Value:
   Default String Value:
   Valid Characters:
   Description: Action to take on a momentary press of the soft power button
   (0=ignore, 1=request graceful system shutdown and power-off)

If users want to  ignore the Power Button of hardware, it's suggest to change the  value of "/Misc/PowerButton" to "0".

Note: This parameter was only to ignore the soft power off (graceful shutdown) from hardware.
          If the hard power off was launched from server iLO ,the host will still power off. This is a hardware behavior.

There are three way to update this ESXi parameter.

1.From the ESXi command line:
# esxcli system settings advanced set -o "/Misc/PowerButton" -i 0

2.From the ESXi Host client:
ESXi Web Interface -- Host > Manage > System > Advanced Settings. 
Search for "Misc.PowerButton" and set to "0".

3.From the vCenter web client:
Find the host in the inventory, go to Configure > System > Advanced System Settings.
Search for "Misc.PowerButton" and set to "0".