Shutting down a VM

This page shows how to use the XenAPI to shut down a VM. The examples are written in python (feel free to add translations to other languages) and will use the API via the local Unix domain socket.

To request a clean shutdown of a VM with a given uuid: (Note this will block for up to 20 minutes while the VM is shutting down)

#!/usr/bin/env python
import XenAPI, sys

if len(sys.argv) <> 2:
   print "Usage:"
   print sys.argv[0], "<VM uuid>"
   sys.exit(1)
uuid = sys.argv[1]

session = XenAPI.xapi_local()
session.xenapi.login_with_password("root", "")
try:
   vm = xenapi.VM.get_by_uuid(uuid)
   xenapi.VM.clean_shutdown(vm)
finally:
   session.xenapi.session.logout()

To forcibly power off a VM, change

xenapi.VM.clean_shutdown(vm)

into

xenapi.VM.hard_shutdown(vm)

Note on older versions of xapi it is necessary to cancel any running "clean_shutdown" tasks before the "hard_shutdown" task can execute. The following program shows how to do this:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import XenAPI, sys

if len(sys.argv) <> 2:
   print "Usage:"
   print sys.argv[0], "<VM uuid>"
   sys.exit(1)
uuid = sys.argv[1]

session = XenAPI.xapi_local()
session.xenapi.login_with_password("root", "")
try:
   # find the VM
   vm = xenapi.VM.get_by_uuid(uuid)
   fields = xenapi.VM.get_record(vm)
   # cancel any tasks operating on the VM (e.g. clean_shutdown)
   current = fields["current_operations"]
   for t in current.keys():
     try:
       print "\n  Cancelling operation on VM: %s" % fields["name_label"],
       sys.stdout.flush()
       session.xenapi.task.cancel(t)
     except Exception, e:
       print "Failed to cancel task: %s" % t,
       sys.stdout.flush()
       raise e
   xenapi.VM.hard_shutdown(vm)
finally:
   session.xenapi.session.logout()