Configuring ESXi Power Management Policy Using the CLI

An interesting question on the VMTN forum caught my eye today, which was around configuring ESXi's Power Management Policy using the command-line via a kickstart script. I found this question to be interesting as I never had to tweak this configuration and was curious myself to see how you might be able to perform this via the command-line as I never recall seeing a command relating to the power management settings.

After a few minutes of digging, I found that the standard set of CLI's such as ESXCLI, vim-cmd, etc. do not provide a way to configure ESXi's power management settings but did find it was possible using my other favorite "not officially supported" CLI called vsish. Now, you can of course create a remote script using the vSphere API to configure this setting, but if you are looking to modify this within a kickstart script, this is route you will want to take.

To check whether your ESXi host supports power management, run the following command:

~ # vsish -e get /power/hardwareSupport 

Hardware power management support {
   CPU power management:Enhanced Intel SpeedStep(R)
   Memory power management:Not available
}

To view the current power management setting, run the following command:

 ~ # vsish -e get /power/currentPolicy

Host power management policy {
   ID: 2
   Short name:dynamic
   Long name:Balanced
   Description:Reduce energy consumption with minimal performance compromise
}

Just like the vSphere Client, you have 4 options which maps to the "ID" property as seen above. You can get more details by querying each of the policy (1-4), here is an example:

~ # vsish -e get /power/policy/1

Host power management policy {
   ID: 1
   Short name:static
   Long name:High Performance
   Description:Do not use any power management features
}

Here's a quick table that maps the policy ID to power management policy which is the same order as shown in the vSphere Client:

Policy ID	Power Management Policy
1	High Performance
2	Balanced
3	Low Power
3	Custom

To change the power management policy, run the following command:

~ # vsish -e set /power/currentPolicy 1

So now you can integrate power management settings in your ESXi kickstart script for automated deployment and configurations!