# Restarting the Appliance

A hard reboot (for example, a "hard restart" in VMware) can leave services unable to restart correctly. Use the graceful procedure below so the appliance shuts down cleanly and your data stays consistent across reboots.

Connect to the appliance over SSH on port 10022, or through the virtual console provided by your VM environment.

To connect over SSH, open a Terminal or Command Prompt and run:

```
ssh user_name@domain_name:10022
```

For Virtual Console access, refer to the documentation for your virtual environment.

Log in. If you do not know the username and password, [contact Support](mailto:support@smartfile.com). Then run:

```
sudo exavaultctl -o restart
```

The restart can take up to 10 minutes.


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.exavault.com/administration-tasks/restarting-the-appliance.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.