Virtual Machine Shutdown/ Startup

To ensure graceful Virtual Machine (VM) shutdown due to a UPS critical event, each VM must have Integration Services installed with Operating system shutdown enabled.  

Once VM shutdown is enabled, the Duration field is the time allowed for all the VMs to gracefully shut down.

If the VMs are shut down before the duration time, PowerChute waits until this time has elapsed before proceeding to the next step in the sequence.

Using the Duration field, ensure that you allow sufficient time to allow all your VMs to be gracefully shut down before the hosts are commanded to shut down.

Re-starting after a shutdown

Selecting Enable VM Startup restarts any VMs that were shut down once a UPS critical event has been resolved. PowerChute first checks that the Host is available.

If VMs are in the process of being started when a critical event occurs, PowerChute waits for the VM Startup duration time to elapse before shutting down VMs. This is to ensure that the VMs are shut down gracefully.


Restarting after a shutdown in a Failover Cluster

When a Hyper-V Host in a Failover Cluster is shut down, Failover Clustering will move the VMs on that Host to another Host in the Cluster, if there is one available. The VMs do not fail back to their original host when it is powered back on. In order for PowerChute to power on VMs that are running on a different node in the cluster to the one on which PowerChute is installed, it is necessary to modify the security permissions for the Cluster Computer Object in Active Directory, as outlined below:

  1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers.
  2. In the View menu select Advanced Features.
  3. Click on the Computers container in the left hand pane.
  4. Select the Cluster computer account in the right hand pane.
  5. Double click on the Cluster computer account to open the properties dialog and go to the Security tab.
  6. Click Add.
  7. Click Object Types and enable Computers. Click OK.
  8. Enter the Failover Cluster node machine name on which PowerChute is installed.
  9. Grant Full Control.
  10. Click Apply.

Repeat steps 8-10 for each node in the Failover Cluster on which PowerChute is installed.