I have long since relied on the /sbin/shutdown.sh && /sbin/poweroff combo to gracefully shut down ESXi hosts and it's never had an issue. After upgrading from 6.0 to 6.5 however my scripts ceased to work.
I SSH'd into the server and ran shutdown.sh manually, only to get the following:
Errors:
Invalid operation requested: This ruleset is required and connot be disabled
Saving current state in /bootbank
Clock updated.
Time: 06:27:02 Date: 12/27/2017 UTC
I stepped through the shutdown script and found that the issue appears when the following is run:
/sbin/services.sh stop
Any ideas what could be causing this?