Having not used the ESXi command line as often as I should, I logged in and found myself in an unfamiliar place. My objective was to enter maintenance mode, reboot the host, and exit maintenance mode.
ESXi CLI Enter Maintenance Mode
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter
ESXi CLI Exit Maintenance Mode
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
ESXi CLI Reboot the host
reboot
Ok, so reboot should have been obvious, however, being used to running shutdown -r now… it was not so much.
Resources:
I adapted the maintenance mode commands from here: http://www.virtualizetips.com/2010/05/how-to-enable-maintenance-mode-on-esx-host-from-command-line/