ESXI Datastore and VM RAM

[customcore0702]

Good morning all

I have the following problem. I added a 1TB disk to my ESXI server yesterday and now wanted to set it up as a network share on my host. Unfortunately, I can only create a VMFS6 and add a virtual disk at the host which only takes up the full or partitioned storage for that host. I will be creating multiple VMs in the future and would like this storage to be shared by all. I may just be overlooking something.

Furthermore, I created a Win11 VM and could only allocate a maximum of 16GB of RAM. I have 64GB in the system and when I allocate more, a MonitorLoop error comes up. Is there a solution for this as well?

Thanks a lot!

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Sachchidanand]

Local disk to ESXi host requires an additional layer which export the disk as a network share, directly it will not work.

MonitorLoop comes up generally when there is disk utilization issue. can you please share the detailed error for MonitorLoop?

Regards,

Sachchidanand

[virtsysadmin]

https://www.openfiler.com/ is one of the best solutions to setup a network share.

can you please share more details on "MonitorLoop error"

https://www.yellow-bricks.com/2018/06/12/module-monitorloop-power-on-error-failed-when-powering-on-v...

[customcore0702]

I will create a virtual machine with the software openfiler and maybe I will have access to the disk to mount it as NFS disk. I hope that it works.

About the MonitorLoop error, unfortunately I can only say something tonight, because I have a problem in the VPN configuration. I create a new ticket, maybe someone of you knows how to help me there

Thanks

[customcore0702]

2023-08-08T17:50:18.775Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu0:1065261)WARNING: SwapFileOps: vm 1065262: 751: Insufficient Disk Space. Available: 18602786816 bytes Requested: 34359738368 bytes
2023-08-08T17:50:18.775Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu0:1065261)WARNING: SwapExtend: 702: Failed to extend swap file /vmfs/volumes/64d0ad96-aa404188-bef2-38f3ab3d8005/Win11/Win11-66e3d1f6.vswp from 0 KB to 33554432 KB : No space left on device
2023-08-08T17:50:18.775Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu0:1065261)WARNING: SwapExtend: 707: Current swap file size is 0 KB.
2023-08-08T17:50:18.775Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu0:1065261)WARNING: SwapExtend: vm 1065262: 711: Failed to extend swap file. type=regular from 0 KB to 33554432 KB. currently 0. status=No space left on device
2023-08-08T17:50:18.775Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu0:1065261)WARNING: SwapExtend: 1186: Failed to extend the virtual machine swap file

Schlüssel
haTask-3-vim.VirtualMachine.powerOn-1793

Beschreibung
Schaltet diese virtuelle Maschine ein.

Virtuelle Maschine:
Win11
Zustand
Fehlgeschlagen - Einschalten des Moduls „MonitorLoop“ fehlgeschlagen.

Fehler
Einschalten des Moduls „MonitorLoop“ fehlgeschlagen.
Erweitern der Auslagerungsdatei /vmfs/volumes/64d0ad96-aa404188-bef2-38f3ab3d8005/Win11/Win11-66e3d1f6.vswp von 0 KB auf 33554432 KB fehlgeschlagen: No space left on device
Aktuelle Größe der Auslagerungsdatei beträgt 0 KB.
Die Auslagerungsdatei der virtuellen Maschine konnte nicht erweitert werden
Die virtuelle Maschine konnte nicht eingeschaltet werden: Kein Speicherplatz frei auf Gerät.
Das Einschalten der VM ist fehlgeschlagen.
Das Starten der virtuellen Maschine ist fehlgeschlagen.

[virtsysadmin]

Hi

2023-08-08T17:50:18.775Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu0:1065261)WARNING: SwapExtend: vm 1065262: 711: Failed to extend swap file. type=regular from 0 KB to 33554432 KB. currently 0. status=No space left on device
2023-08-08T17:50:18.775Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu0:1065261)WARNING: SwapExtend: 1186: Failed to extend the virtual machine swap file

no space for swap file  - https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2030250

[CallistoJag]

If this is for a home lab with more than one hosts and the best performance is not required... I often create a machine on the datastore and set this up as a NAS (TRUENAS/FREENAS). This is then shared/presented to all my ESXi as a shared datastore for new VM's. If there is just one host however and you have the disk recognised as a VMFS datastore then not sure why this is not working for you as it should be available for installing all VMs (assuming they do not amount to more than 1TB of space :). The error with the RAM size for VMs seems that your datastore/disk that is available for the VM is not large enough to handle the swap files is needs to run a system with this much RAM.  

[customcore0702]

Good morning.

So again for my understanding. I create a VM with a HDD of 100GB. I assign 32GB RAM to the VM. That means I have to calculate 132GB for this machine as free space on the datastore? I only have 3GB free there. That means I either have to swap to a larger HDD or shrink the Windows VM HDD.

I hope that is understandably formulated

[CallistoJag]

No VM RAM has nothing to do with datastore space unless you are snapshotting it. However there needs to be some space for ESXi swap files. You could try assigning ESXi swap files to another disk/datastore? If you are only using 100GB of 1TB though, seems a little odd. Ah I see you only have 3GB free, sounds like we have your issue. You need either to free up more space on the datastore or fine another disk to move ESXi swap files too.

[customcore0702]

You say that the RAM has nothing to do with the HDD memory. But without touching the HDD and only increase the RAM does not work. Then exactly the error comes. As I said, I leave the hard disk untouched and only want to change the RAM, but the error appears.

I'll try to swap out the data or shrink the HDD via SSH.

[CallistoJag]

It does not effect the HDD of the VM, but it does rely on the space free on the datastore you have the ESXi swap files in. 3GB of free capacity will severely limit the RAM you can assign to the VM I believe.