Listing VM world IDs from the ESXi shell

When a VM hangs so hard that vCenter’s Power Off just spins, the fix is on the host itself. Every running VM has a World ID, and esxcli will list them along with the display name and the VMX path, so you can be sure you are about to kill the right one.

bash

esxcli vm process list
esxcli vm process kill --type=soft --world-id=2101234

Start with --type=soft; it asks the guest to shut down. If that does nothing after a minute, escalate to hard, and only then to force, which is the equivalent of pulling the power cord. Check the process list again afterwards — the entry should be gone before you power the VM back on from vCenter.