How To: Properly Shut Down a vCloud Director Cell

Many folks may or may not know this but there has been a tool added for VMware vCloud Director 1.0.1 to properly Quiesce and shutdown a cell in order to let open tasks finish.  It you simply stop the services you can fail out running tasks.  For vCloud Director 1.0.1 you need to download and install the Cell Management Tool.  You can find all the instructions for this in a very simple VMware Knowledge Base Article.

Now the trick is that the tool listed in the KB and the commands are DIFFERENT for vCloud Director 1.5!  They look close to the same, but there is an added switch required.  Also the documentation is not entirely correct.  It states that is you do not specify the password it will prompt you.  That is 100% not the case, you need to type it in the command line for anything to work.  After much searching I located the new commands and switches and I have provided them below for you.

NOTE:  I have found that SSH does NOT return any information but using the console does.  If anyone else can confirm this I did open a case about it.

1. Log into the server as root.  
2. Use the Cell Management Tool to gracefully shut down the cell

• Retrieve Current Job Status

[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin]# ./cell-management-tool -u administrator -p Pa55w0rd cell --status
Job count = 3
Is Active = true

• Stop the scheduler to quiesce the cell (This will prevent new tasks from starting, current tasks will run until finished.  To cancel a task you the API or portal.

[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin]# ./cell-management-tool -u administrator -p Pa55w0rd cell --quiesce true

• When the job count is 0 and the status active=false you can shutdown the cell.  You will need to keep repeating step #1 until you see 0 and active=false

[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin]# ./cell-management-tool -u administrator -p Pa55w0rd cell --shutdown

This information is located in the online library for vCloud Director, but notice the “cell” switch that is new and different from 1.0.1.  That was added for 1.5 and through me for a loop for about an hour, along with the incorrect documentation that the password will prompt if you do not enter it.  Below is the full list of switches and commands.

Cell Management Tool Options, Arguments, Login, and Help

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Cell Management Tool Options, Arguments, “cell” subcommand

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