In this article I will discuss a simple trick to start a virtual machine through the Managed Object Browser (MOB). This can be handy in case of troubleshooting or if you don’t have vCenter or a Windows vSphere Client available (for example if you’re running MAC, you will need the vSphere WebClient and you cannot run the vSphere Windows client).
The MOB is part of each ESXi host and is available through https://esx01.domain.local/mob. Login using the root account of your ESXi host. The MOB gives you access to the various objects (for example VMs, but also datastores and vSwitches) on your ESXi host and allows you to invoke methods on these objects. The only thing you need is a webbrowser and a network connection to your ESXi host.
To start a virtual machine:
- Select content in the MOB.
- Select ha-folder-root.
- Select ha-datacenter.
- Select ha-folder-vm.
- Now select a virtual machine you want to start and click the VM ID.
- Select the PowerOnVM_Task.
- Clear the host value and click invoke method.
- Click invoke method a second time and the VM will start.
You can check the powerstate of the VM through the runtime option and search for powerstate:
That’s all! Note that the MOB is also available on the ESXi homepage:
