Virtual machines with Solaris 11 guest operating systems experience slow power off operation

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Power off operations on Solaris 11 guest operating systems are slow, and behavior varies depending on whether VMware Tools is installed.

When VMware Tools is installed and you initiate a power off operation from inside the guest OS or from the vSphere Web Client, the guest OS starts to shut down, but never completes the operation. Alternatively, the guest OS shuts down after five or ten minutes.

If VMware Tools is not installed, it can take approximately 10 minutes to shut down the guest OS after you initiate a soft power off operation. If you use the halt command to power off the guest OS, the operation does not complete. The shut down process starts, but stops responding and requires a hard power off of the virtual machine.

This behavior is a known issue with Solaris 11.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1

Resolution

If the shutdown process appears to stall and does not show a reboot message, press any key to reboot the virtual machine. This action should complete the reboot with no data loss. Otherwise, no workarounds are available.