How to power off an unresponsive vm via cli

From: https://www.vladan.fr/esxi-5-unresponsive-vm-h/

Step 1 – connect via SSH by using puty for example and enter esxtop.

Enter “esxtop”, then press “c” for the CPU resource screen and shift + V to display VMs only.

ESXi 5 Unresponsive VM

Step 2 – changing the display and locating the LWID number

Press “f” to change the display fields and press “c” in order to show the LWID (Leader World Id) and press ENTER.

How to kill unresponsive VM in VMware ESXi 5

Step 3 – Invoking the k (kill) with the number does it…..

Now when you have the LWID column there, you can see the VM which interests you by the LWID number.

You can press “k” and enter the LWID number of the VM which you want to stop. Note that this is hard stop so, the next time that the VM will boot you’ll probbably see this screen (depending on your guest OS of course).

VMware ESXi 5 – How to kill an unresponsive VM through command line

If this method don’t work, you can’t vmotion the VM elsewhere or any other option don’t work either, there might be a hardware problem with the host which can lead into PSOD.