Power controls

The Power Control tab on your server’s product details page provides three power actions. These operate at the hardware level through the server’s out-of-band management interface.

Available Actions

Stop Server

Powers off the server immediately. This is a hard shutdown — the operating system does not receive a shutdown signal and does not get a chance to stop services or flush data to disk.

Stop Server is a hard power cut. Use this only when the server is unresponsive. For a clean shutdown, SSH into the server and run shutdown -h now or poweroff instead.

Reset Server

Performs a hard reset — equivalent to pressing the physical reset button on the chassis. The server immediately power cycles without a clean OS shutdown.

Use this when the server is completely frozen and unresponsive to SSH or the iKVM console.

Reboot Server

Sends a reboot command to the server. The operating system receives the reboot signal and attempts a clean restart.

When to Use Each Action

Normal shutdown     → SSH: shutdown -h now
Normal reboot       → SSH: reboot
Server unresponsive → Reset Server (hard reset)
Server hung/frozen  → Stop Server, then power on

For routine operations, always prefer SSH commands. They allow the operating system to stop services, flush caches, and unmount filesystems cleanly. Use the portal power controls as a fallback when SSH is unavailable.