Shut down the guest operating system before leaving Avanti. Historical OpenVMS guidance uses Ctrl-P from the console session to return to SRM when necessary; that path and every guest shutdown variant have not been revalidated for 5.1.0, so confirm that the guest has stopped disk activity and that the SRM prompt is visible.

At the SRM prompt, type EXIT. With the retained firmware used by Avanti 5.1.0, the console returns the complete line exit: No such command; Avanti recognizes that response and enters its orderly shutdown and state-save path. Confirm completion by observing that the emulator process exits or the console session disconnects. If the response is absent and the process remains running, do not assume that state was saved or treat an abrupt host-process termination as an equivalent shutdown. The curated OpenVMS V7.0 and Tru64 UNIX V4.0G runs validate NVRAM boot-variable persistence through this path. TOY-file persistence is conditional on the guest having initialized or changed the emulated clock and on a writable configured path; those runners did not deliberately mutate and compare the TOY file.