24.4 Shutting Down a Guest System

The shutdown option of the virsh tool, as the name suggests, is used to shutdown a guest operating system:

# virsh shutdown guestName

Note that the shutdown option allows the guest operating system to perform an orderly shutdown when it receives the shutdown instruction. To instantly stop a guest operating system the destroy option may be used (with all the attendant risks of file system damage and data loss):

# virsh destroy guestName