How to Stop a VPS: Graceful Shutdown or Forced Power Off

Updated: 22 October 2026 · Applies to: Ucartz KVM VPS managed with Virtualizor; shutdown commands tested on Debian 13 (systemd 257)

To stop your Ucartz VPS, open it in the client area (Services › My Services › your VPS) and click Stop: this asks the operating system to shut down cleanly. Use Poweroff only when Stop does not work, because it cuts the power at once, like pulling the plug. From inside the server, sudo shutdown -h now or sudo systemctl poweroff does the same as Stop. The VPS stays off until you click Start.

Stop, Poweroff or Restart: which one?

According to Virtualizor's documentation, the power buttons do this:

• Stop: sends a graceful shutdown signal to the operating system. Programs close, files are written to disk, then the VPS turns off. Use this normally.
• Poweroff: hard power-off of the virtual hardware. Anything not yet written to disk is lost, and databases may need to recover at the next boot. Use it only when the VPS does not react to Stop.
• Restart: a graceful reboot. Use it when you want the VPS back straight away (see How to Restart or Reboot Your VPS Using Virtualizor).
• Start: turns on a VPS that is off (see How to Start or Boot Your VPS Using Virtualizor).

For the same steps with screenshots of the Virtualizor panel, see How to Shut Down Your VPS Safely or Forcefully via Virtualizor.

Stop the VPS from the panel

1. Log in to the Ucartz client area, open Services › My Services and click your VPS. The Virtualizor controls are on the service page. You can also log in to the Virtualizor panel directly with the address in your VPS welcome email and open the VPS from List VPS with the gear (Manage) icon.
2. Click Stop at the top right and confirm with Ok. Virtualizor confirms with "The Shutdown signal has been sent to the VPS".
3. Wait a minute or two. The status changes from Online to Offline when the operating system has finished shutting down.
4. Still Online after several minutes? Click Poweroff and confirm. The panel shows "The VPS has been Powered Off successfully". If there is no Poweroff button, use Stop again or open a Technical Support ticket.

If you need the VPS off at a set time, Virtualizor can do it for you: How to Set Up an Automatic Timer for VPS Shutdown, Start, or Reboot in Virtualizor.

Why Stop sometimes does nothing

• The system is hung or very busy. It cannot react to the shutdown signal. Look at the screen through the VNC console first, then use Poweroff.
• ACPI is turned off. According to Virtualizor, the ACPI setting is what lets the server react to the panel's power buttons, for example a clean shutdown. See How to Enable or Disable APIC, ACPI, and VNC in Virtualizor.
• Windows is installing updates or a program is blocking the shutdown. Give it time, or shut down from inside Windows.

Shut down from inside the server (Linux)

Log in over SSH or the VNC console and run one of these as root or with sudo. Both shut down cleanly, exactly like Stop:

sudo shutdown -h now

sudo systemctl poweroff

Your SSH session closes and the VPS shows Offline in the panel. On Debian 13 and other systemd distributions, shutdown, poweroff, halt and reboot are all links to systemctl.

To warn logged-in users and shut down later, give a delay in minutes or a time:

sudo shutdown -h +5

Output:

Shutdown scheduled for Thu 2026-10-22 13:43:49 UTC, use 'shutdown -c' to cancel.

Check or cancel a scheduled shutdown:

sudo shutdown --show

sudo shutdown -c

After cancelling, sudo shutdown --show prints No scheduled shutdown. To restart instead of stopping, use sudo shutdown -r now or sudo systemctl reboot.

Shut down from inside Windows

Shut down from the Start menu as usual, or run this in a Command Prompt:

shutdown /s /t 0

According to Microsoft, /s shuts down, /r restarts, /t sets the delay in seconds (default 30) and shutdown /a cancels a pending shutdown during that delay.

Starting it again

A VPS you have stopped stays off: it does not come back by itself. Open it in the client area and click Start.

Stopping a KVM virtual machine on your own server

If you searched for "stop vm" because you run your own KVM host with libvirt (for example on a dedicated server), the commands are virsh shutdown NAME to "gracefully shutdown a domain" and virsh destroy NAME to "forcefully stop a given domain, but leave its resources intact" (libvirt 11.3.0 help text). Despite its name, destroy does not delete the VM or its disk; it is the same as Poweroff. To start it again, see How to Start a KVM, Xen or OpenVZ VM from the Command Line.