Card to start/stop VM

Configuration Frontend
1

I’m completely new to HA, migrating from Domoticz and most of the things I sorted out with the help of the forums an chatGPT :slight_smile:

One of the things remaining: I would like to see the status of a esxi vm (online/offline) and start/stop it with a pushbutton.

I followed this guide AUTOMATION - Gracefully Shutdown VM's & ESXi Host via SSH
and I’m able to run a script againts the VM guest from the HA ssh shell, and this works. Now I want to put this all in 1 card. Somehing like:
afbeelding

This is in my configuration.yaml:

## ESX Buttons
shell_command:
    turn_on_pluto: ssh -i /config/ssh_keys/id_rsa_homeassistant -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "/vmfs/volumes/DataDisk8TB/scripts/startpluto.sh"
    turn_off_pluto: ssh -i /config/ssh_keys/id_rsa_homeassistant -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "/vmfs/volumes/DataDisk8TB/scripts/stoppluto.sh"
    turn_on_wks: ssh -i /config/ssh_keys/id_rsa_homeassistant -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "/vmfs/volumes/DataDisk8TB/scripts/startwks.sh"
    turn_off_wks: ssh -i /config/ssh_keys/id_rsa_homeassistant -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "/vmfs/volumes/DataDisk8TB/scripts/stopwks.sh"

but then with 3 vm’s.
What is the best approach to do this ?

2

if you don’t want to have 3 cards, one for each, then you could create a dropdown helper. use that to choose which vm you’re wanting to start/stop. then have the start/stop refer to the dropdown (it’ll be an input_select entity) to know which vm to do.

3

I’m still not getting the overview of the HA config.
I managed to create an online/offline binary switch w/ ICMP instead of ping (which is obsolete)

afbeelding
This goes connected/disconnected as with the state of the VM.

configuration.yaml

## ESX Buttons
shell_command:
    turn_on_pluto: ssh -i /config/ssh_keys/id_rsa_homeassistant -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "/vmfs/volumes/DataDisk8TB/scripts/startpluto.sh"
    turn_off_pluto: ssh -i /config/ssh_keys/id_rsa_homeassistant -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "/vmfs/volumes/DataDisk8TB/scripts/stoppluto.sh"

switch:
  - platform: template
    switches:
      pluto:
        unique_id: pluto
        friendly_name: Pluto
        value_template: "{{ is_state('binary_sensor.pluto', 'connected') }}"
        turn_on:
          - service: shell_command.turn_on_pluto
            entity_id: switch.pluto
        turn_off:
          - service: shell_command.turn_off_pluto
            entity_id: switch.pluto

Button card:

show_name: true
show_icon: true
type: button
entity: switch.pluto
name: Pluto
show_state: true

The binary sensor works as expected and the switch goes with the state of the VM.

When I add a switch in the dashboard and toggle it, nothing happens.
Running the command from the SSH plugin works as expected.
What am I dooing wrong ?

4

Instead of using ‘connected’ have you tried using ‘on’? While the state in your UI will say connected or disconnected, the state is on or off.

5

Yes, this solves the on/off, but still searching why the ssh command is not running.

6

Found it
I solved it by using both SSH and the advanced plugin.
With the regular SSH plugin I couldn’t disable protection mode.
With the advanced SSH, I was not able to connect anymore to my esxi host.

1/
Create an ICMP binary sensor for the hosts you want. (here binary.sensor.pluto)
This will check the state of the switch.

2/

shell_command:
    turn_on_pluto: '/usr/bin/ssh -i /config/ssh_keys/id_rsa_homeassistant -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "/vmfs/volumes/DataDisk8TB/scripts/startpluto.sh"'
    turn_off_pluto: '/usr/bin/ssh -i /config/ssh_keys/id_rsa_homeassistant -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "/vmfs/volumes/DataDisk8TB/scripts/stoppluto.sh"'
switch:
  - platform: template
    switches:
      pluto:
        unique_id: pluto
        friendly_name: Pluto
        value_template: "{{ is_state('binary_sensor.pluto', 'on') }}"
        turn_on:
          - service: shell_command.turn_on_pluto
            entity_id: switch.pluto
        turn_off:
          - service: shell_command.turn_off_pluto
            entity_id: switch.pluto

3/
Use this as reference for creating keys with esxi:

4/
Install Advanced SSH & Web Terminal and disable protection mode, and run

`docker exec -it homeassistant /bin/bash`

5/
disable/remove Advanced SSH

Now my shell commands are running :slight_smile:

afbeelding