Power actions
Start, shutdown, reboot, hard stop, suspend and resume, each with its own permission, for one VM or many.
Actions and permissions
| Action | Permission | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Start | vm.power.start | Powers the VM on |
| Shutdown | vm.power.shutdown | Asks the guest OS to shut down gracefully |
| Reboot | vm.power.reboot | Graceful restart |
| Hard stop | vm.power.hardstop | Cuts power immediately |
| Suspend | vm.power.suspend | Hibernates the guest: memory is written to storage and the host gets its RAM back |
| Resume | vm.power.resume | Brings a suspended VM back exactly where it left off |
Hard stop gives the guest no chance to flush anything. Prefer Shutdown unless the guest is unresponsive; that is why hard stop is a separate permission.
Where to find them
- Every VM row has an action menu (the ⋯ button or right-click). Power is its first submenu.
- The VM page header has a power split-button whose main action follows the state: Shutdown while running, Resume while suspended, Start while stopped.
- Items are disabled when they don't fit the VM's state or you lack the permission. The server re-checks every call regardless of what the menu showed, and records it in Activity.
- All power actions are disabled while a VM is provisioning or locked by a configuration run.
- The same menu holds the VM's other actions: console, Take snapshot, Backup now, Deploy, Change owner, Clone (vm.clone), Rename (vm.edit.resources), copy name, VM ID or IP, and Delete.
Suspend and resume
- Suspend is a real hibernate: the memory image goes to storage and the VM stops.
- Proxmox refuses to hibernate a VM managed by high availability, so the portal takes it out of HA for the duration. It is put back (same state and affinity rule) once the VM runs again, whether it was resumed or started.
- A suspended VM keeps showing as Suspended even though its agent is offline; Resume is its main action.
Bulk actions
Select several rows (Ctrl or Cmd-click, Shift-click or drag a selection box) and the menu switches to Start all, Shutdown all, Delete all and so on; Take snapshot creates one snapshot per selected VM. State still applies per VM: starting a mixed selection only starts the stopped ones.
Feedback
- A toast confirms that a command was sent; failures show the hypervisor's error.
- During a power action the VM's name shimmers until the guest has really changed state, whether the action came from the portal, the REST API, a lease or a schedule.
- Status dots follow the live agent feed, so a hung guest shows its real state.
- “Isn't linked to a live Proxmox guest yet” means the VM has no live mapping, typically while provisioning is still linking the clone.
Features on this page
- Granular power actions
- Suspend and resume
- Bulk actions
- Live power feedback
- Clone and rename
More in Virtual machinesAll topics
Create a VMThe seven-step New VM wizard, how names map to VMIDs, placement, and what happens after Create.The VM page and consoleThe Virtual Machines list, a VM's tabs, and the browser console (noVNC, SSH and RDP).Resources and disk usageLive CPU, memory and disk resizing, behaviour settings, and an on-demand scan of what fills a disk.