Detect if ESXi installed on internal SD flash

[Jonseet]

HI All,

im currently working on a project to free up the disks on the physical hosts by moving the hypervisor over to Dual internal SD cards.  Does anyone know of a way to detect whether ESXi has already been installed to an SD rather than to the disk arrays?  I can't seem to find the information in vCenter.  Maybe there's a command in the CLI?

thanks!

Jon

[maishsk · Accepted solution]

It will be a combination of several commands

First find the vmfs path of boot disk

ls -la /bootbank

which will give you something like

/bootbank -> /vmfs/volumes/c3fc2b77-b938092d-0a3d-abb9bf510f0f

Now do find which disk id that is actually using

vmkfstools -P /vmfs/volumes/c3fc2b77-b938092d-0a3d-abb9bf510f0f

which will give you something like

vfat-0.04 file system spanning 1 partitions.

File system label (if any):

Mode: private

Capacity 261853184 (63929 file blocks * 4096), 109244416 (26671 blocks) avail

UUID: c3fc2b77-b938092d-0a3d-abb9bf510f0f

Partitions spanned (on "disks"):

        t10.ATA_____WDC_WD2500AAKS2D00B3A0________________________WD2DWMAT12492277:6

Is Native Snapshot Capable: NO

Now you can find the details of the disk with

esxcli storage core device list |grep -A27 ^t10.ATA_____WDC

which will give you the information you are looking for

t10.ATA_____WDC_WD2500AAKS2D00B3A0________________________WD2DWMAT12492277

   Display Name: Local ATA Disk (t10.ATA_____WDC_WD2500AAKS2D00B3A0________________________WD2DWMAT12492277)

   Has Settable Display Name: true

   Size: 238475

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD2500AAKS2D00B3A0________________________WD2DWMAT12492277

   Vendor: ATA

   Model: WDC WD2500AAKS-0

   Revision: 01.0

   SCSI Level: 5

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: false

   Is Local: true

   Is Removable: false

   Is SSD: true

   Is Offline: false

   Is Perennially Reserved: false

   Queue Full Sample Size: 0

   Queue Full Threshold: 0

   Thin Provisioning Status: unknown

   Attached Filters:

   VAAI Status: unknown

   Other UIDs: vml.0100000000202020202057442d574d41543132343932323737574443205744

   Is Local SAS Device: false

   Is Boot USB Device: false

This article is where the information came from

[Jonseet]

Hi maishsk,

Thank You!

For the sake of others, this is what to look for.  See screenshot: