I have that procedure documented also but it seems to only work in VI3 but not in vSphere as there is no /cpu/status directory in the /proc/vmware/vm/ directory. I have it documented a bit different as shown below, if you know how to make it work in vSphere please let us know….thanks

o Login to the service console
o Get the vmid of the VM you want to kill by typing “vm-support –x” or “cat /proc/vmware/vm/*/names” (ie. 2533)
o Get the world ID of the VM by typing “less –S /proc/vmware/vm//cpu/status” (substitute with the # from the step above) Use the right arrow to scroll to the right and see the Group field value (ie. vm.2532, this is the WID of the VM), press Q to exit. A world is the software entity created in the VMkernel that runs the virtual machine. To put it another way, every Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) has a unique world ID assigned for the duration it is powered on. It is similar to a process ID in any other operating system.
o To kill the VM type “/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmkload_app –k 9 ” (substitute with the # from the step above)
o You will see a message “Sending signal ‘9′ to world 2532” If the command fails you will see a message “Failed to forward signal 9 to cartel 2532”, otherwise you will see not see a response.

when I try your way, I can’t find
proc/vmware/vm/vmid value/cpu/

[root@esx41 ~]# ls /proc/vmware/vm/10804/
alloc  names

Although kill -9 is an option. VMware support has advised, and I have experienced, that you could possibly still leave remnants of a VM running if you do that. Here is a cleaner way to kill the VM:

1. If the vmware-cmd does not help next up is to kill the master user world id
2. cat /proc/vmware/vm/*/names |grep vmname where vmname is the vm that is hung and find the value for vmid
3. less /proc/vmware/vm/vmid value/cpu/status where vmid value is the number from step above.
4. scroll over to the right until you find the group field that shows vm.#### where the #### numbers after vm. will be the master user world id
5. /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmkload_app -k 9 #### where #### is the master user world id
If successful you will get a WARNING message that a signal 9 is being sent and this will cleanly kill all processes associated with the VM.

-Robert Reynolds