Graceful Shutdown for VMware vSphere Virtual Machines

In Rancher v2.8.3 and later, you can configure the graceful shutdown of virtual machines (VMs) for VMware vSphere node driver clusters. Graceful shutdown introduces a delay before the VM is forcibly deleted, which allows time for terminating any running processes and open connections.

In RKE2/K3s, you can set up graceful shutdown when you create the cluster, or edit the cluster configuration to add it afterward.

In RKE, you can edit node templates to similar results.

Enable Graceful Shutdown During VMware vSphere Cluster Creation

RKE2/K3s

In RKE2/K3s, you can configure new VMware vSphere clusters with graceful shutdown for VMs:

1. Click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. Click Create and select VMware vSphere to provision a new cluster.
3. Under Machine Pools > Scheduling, in the Graceful Shutdown Timeout field, enter an integer value greater than 0. The value you enter is the amount of time in seconds Rancher waits before deleting VMs on the cluster. If the value is set to 0, graceful shutdown is disabled.

RKE

In RKE, you can't directly configure a new cluster with graceful shutdown. However, you can configure node templates which automatically create node pools with graceful shutdown enabled. The node template can then be used to provision new VMware vSphere clusters that have a graceful shutdown delay.

1. Click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. From the left navigation, select RKE1 Configuration > Node Templates.
3. Click Add Template and select vSphere to create a node template.
4. Under 2. Scheduling, in the Graceful Shutdown Timeout field, enter an integer value greater than 0. The value you enter is the amount of time in seconds Rancher waits before deleting VMs on the cluster. If the value is set to 0, graceful shutdown is disabled.

When you use the newly-created node template to create node pools, the nodes will gracefully shutdown of VMs according to the Graceful Shutdown Timeout value you have set.

Enable Graceful Shutdown in Existing RKE2/K3s Clusters

In RKE2/K3s, you can edit the configuration of an existing VMware vSphere cluster to enable graceful shutdown, which adds a delay before deleting VMs.

1. Click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. On the Clusters page, find the VMware vSphere hosted cluster you want to edit. Click ⋮ at the end of the row associated with the cluster. Select Edit Config.
3. Under Machine Pools > Scheduling, in the Graceful Shutdown Timeout field, enter an integer value greater than 0. The value you enter is the amount of time in seconds Rancher waits before deleting VMs on the cluster. If the value is set to 0, graceful shutdown is disabled.

Enable Graceful Shutdown in Existing RKE Clusters

In RKE, you can't directly edit an existing cluster's configuration to add graceful shutdown to existing VMware vSphere clusters. However, you can edit the configuration of existing node templates. As noted in Updating a Node Template, all node pools using the node template automatically use the updated information when new nodes are added to the cluster.

1. Click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. From the left navigation, select RKE1 Configuration > Node Templates.
3. Find the VMware vSphere node template you want to edit. Click ⋮ at the end of the row associated with the template. Select Edit.
4. Under 2. Scheduling, in the Graceful Shutdown Timeout field, enter an integer value greater than 0. The value you enter is the amount of time in seconds Rancher waits before deleting VMs on the cluster. If the value is set to 0, graceful shutdown is disabled.
5. Click Save.