Learning PowerCLI - Second Edition

Starting and stopping virtual machines

You have created your virtual machine, but it is still powered off. In this section, you will learn how to start, suspend, and stop a virtual machine using PowerCLI.

Starting virtual machines

To start a virtual machine, you can use the Start-VM cmdlet. This cmdlet has the following syntax:

Start-VM [-RunAsync] [-VM] <VirtualMachine[]> [-Server 
    <VIServer[]>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]

The -VM parameter is required to start a virtual machine.

In the first example, we will start the virtual machine VM2 using the following command:

PowerCLI C:\> Start-VM -VM VM2

The output of the preceding command is as follows:

Name                 PowerState Num CPUs MemoryGB
----                 ---------- -------- --------
VM2 PoweredOn 2 4.000 ...