Shutdown Proxmox VM using CLI

17 October 2023

If you’re looking to shut down a virtual machine running on a Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE), you can use the Proxmox command-line interface (CLI) to accomplish this task quite effectively. The command for shutting down a VM in Proxmox is qm shutdown, followed by the ID of the virtual machine you’d like to shut down. Here’s how to do it:

Access the Server: First, log in to your Proxmox server via SSH.
```
ssh username@your-proxmox-server-ip
```
Locate the VM ID: If you’re unsure of the VM ID, you can list all VMs by running:
```
qm list
```
This will display a list of VMs along with their IDs and statuses.
Shutdown the VM: Once you have the VM ID, use the following command to shut down the VM gracefully:
```
qm shutdown VM_ID
```
Replace VM_ID with the ID of the virtual machine you want to shut down. For example, if your VM ID is 101, the command would be:
```
qm shutdown 101
```

Note that qm shutdown will attempt to shut down the VM gracefully, meaning it will send an ACPI shutdown signal to the OS. If the VM does not respond to this signal, it will not be forcibly powered off. If you need to force the shutdown, you can use qm stop VM_ID, although this is akin to pulling the plug and should be used as a last resort.