I use VirtualBox constantly, and I’ve used VMWare in the past, so I’m not new to virtual machines. However, this has my head scratching.

I created a droplet using the WordPress image (based on Ubuntu 14.04), and it mostly seems to be working OK. However, I noticed that whenever I do a “shutdown now” from the commandline, the online dashboard still says it is on. I believe it does this as well with the “poweroff” command.

OK, so then I click the button to turn it off so I can take a snapshot. I’ve been suspecting for a while something squirrelly was going on, so just now I took a snapshot, and I opened up a browser tab, and there is my machine already on!

Every other virtual software I’ve used recognizes the machine as off once it is turned off from the OS. Every other virtual software I’ve used takes a snapshot without doing anything to the power state. Every other virtual software I’ve used requires it being turned on after taking a snapshot (if it was already off).

It seems that either taking a snapshot turns it on, or, worse, turning it off from the web control panel actually turns it back on. In either case, this is not desired or expected behavior.