We have to shutdown the management components of the VMware homelab in a specific order to keep components operational by maintaining the necessary infrastructure, networking, and management services prior before shutdown.

The order is as follows:

  1. vRA
  2. vROps
  3. vRLCM
  4. vRLI
  5. vIDM
  6. NSX-T Edge nodes
  7. NSX-T Managers
  8. Tanzu Cluster Control Plane VMs
  9. Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster worker VMs
  10. Supervisor Control Plane VMs
  11. Harbor VMs
  12. VCD
  13. Compute vCenter Server (vc2)
  14. Nested ESXi servers (from within vc1)
  15. Management vCenter Server (vc1)
  16. Supporting Service VMs (routers, NFS server, jump box, …)
  17. Physical ESXi server

Most of the VMs can be either shutdown from within the vSphere Client (right-click on the VM and select Power > Shutdown Guest OS). But some of the VMs require special treatment.

vRA

The recommended manner to shut down and start vRealize Automation components is to use the Power OFF and ON functionality provided in Lifecycle Operations > Environments section of vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.

The official VMware documentation with the latest procedures can be accessed here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Automation/8.6/Administering/GUID-99D06124-13F8-489A-B43C-EAEC3F4FE582.html

Tanzu related VMs

Log into the Compute vCSA as root and stop the WCP services by executing vmon-cli -k wcp from the shell.

To shut down the Tanzu VMs (TKC cluster control plane VMs, and Supervisor control plane VMs), we must log into the ESXi Host Client and execute the shutdown there.

The Harbor VMs will be automatically powered off, when the nested ESXi servers are shut down.