VMware vSphere – Could Not Launch vCenter vSphere Client

You should be fine.

To power everything off.

1. Shut down all VM's (apart from the vCenter Server and its SQL server if it's a separate VM).
2. Then put all all the hosts apart from the one running vCenter\SQL into maintenance mode and shut them down.
3. Shut down the VC box and the SQL box (if needed) from an RDP session or using a VI Client session connected to the remaining host.
4. Now shut down the last host. Remember which one this was as you want to restart this one first since the VC server is registered to this host and restarting it is straightforward.

To start up again.

1. Power up the last host you shut down and connect to it with the VI Client.
2. Start up SQL (again only if it's a separate VM) and then start up the vCenter VM.
3. Disconnect the VI Client from the single host and connect to vCenter.
4. Now start up your hosts and take them out of maintenance mode.
5. You can begin starting VM's as soon as you have a couple of Hosts running and out of Maintenance mode, just make sure you don't try to start so many that you overload the available host resources before the cluster is back to sufficient strength.

brian, if you're still out there, it would be great to have feed-back from you.

In regards to the biggest problem with vSphere Client vCenter Customization Specification IP address information not sticking when I load a Sysprep XML file, I confirmed with VMware that it's a known bug since ESX 4.0 (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1029174) that causes this problem with WinVista-2008-7-2008R2. The VMware tech support person said this issue was supposed to be fixed in ESX 5.0, but has been pushed back until ESX 6.0, at least. It's just too bad their Customization Specification Wizard doesn't alert you to this issue.

Brian