Hello,
I have to migrate my ESX hosts 3.5u4 to vSphere 4.1, I would like to ask you what is the best partitions for the local storage?
I found the best practices on vmware website :
The /, swap, and all the optional partitions are stored on a virtual disk called esxconsole-<UUID>.vmdk. Set a size minimum of 8GB for this virtual disk.
Note: For /var/log, VMware recommends a separate partition to prevent unexpected disk space constraints due to extensive logging.
I found this too :
So how do paritions apply to ESX 4.1 hosts? During an ESX 4.x installation, three physical partitions are created:
The Service Console used for the ESX Server command-line management interface is located in the VMFS filesystem as a virtual disk named esxconsole.vmdk. (This virtual disk can be stored on a SAN LUN or different block device than the system disk, as long as it has been partitioned and formatted as VMFS.) As a best practice, the esxconsole.vmdk should not be situated on a shared SAN LUN.
What for local partition do you advise me ?
Kind regards
It is advisable that you go to ESXi version, with ESXi version you do not need to have the headache do define your own custom partition layout as it has being fixed.
also with ESXi version, it would be much easier to upgrade as there is no longer any new ESX release.
Idle-Jam is correct - no pooint bothering to upgrade to a version of VMware that is going to be end-of-lifed.
Personally, I use the defaults and I alwys install to USB key. This means that when upgrade time comes, I can (if I like) pull the USB key and build a new one, which I can add to the server - in the instance that my new server fails, I have a quick roll-back.
ESX no longer has any advantages over ESXi (except in extremely rare circumstances where people have tailored SC apps)
Good luck
With ESX 4.1 you have correctly defined there will be 3 partitions:
1100MB Boot partition, 110MB VMkernel core dump partition, and the rest of the space on your drive will be created as an extended partition formatted as a VMFS.
If you have a 72GB local drive then your extended VMFS partition is going to be approximately 70GB. The esxconsole.vmdk should be at least 8GB, and will reside on this 3rd partition. So you'd be left with 62GB 'spare' local drive space.
Whether you want to create a larger esxconsole.vmdk to accomodate more logs, data files or a larger swap partition depends on how you want to utilise your 'spare' local space. This is what is on the esxconsole.vmdk:
5GB root partition
2GB log partition
600MB swap partition
rest of space as an extended partition
The Service Console can be configured with 800MB of memory, which means the swap partition ought to be double that, at 1.6GB. I personally would want at least enough space on the esxconsole.vmdk to accomodate the 1.6GB swap partition just in case I need it in the future. VMware would also suggest allowing for more log space. So I would suggest you want 9GB minimum for esxconsole.vmdk. Which means the overall local drive space for installing ESX 4.1 should be 10.2GB (why not round it up to 11 or 12GB or more if the local disks are big enough - most VMware features require shared storage for the VM's, so much local storage becomes unused anyway).
In the ESX Installation guide, they describes to create /boot, swap and / with a script and some optional partitions like /home, /tmp, /usr and /var/log
Do you advise me to keep the standard partition for ESX?
What did you choose for your installation?
Thanks
although we are rolling to ESXi, we used to be 100% ESX. Below is a snip from our ks.cfg for our partitions, maybe it will help.
#############################################################
# Clear partitions
clearpart --firstdisk --overwritevmfs
##############################################################
#Partitioning
part /boot --fstype=ext3 --size=1100 --onfirstdisk
part <esxname>-local --fstype=vmfs3 --size=17146 --grow --onfirstdisk
part None --fstype=vmkcore --size=180 --onfirstdisk
##############################################################
# Create the vmdk on the cos vmfs partition.
virtualdisk cos --size=15946 --onvmfs=<esxname>-local
###########################################################
# Partition the virtual disk
part / --fstype=ext3 --size=5120 --grow --onvirtualdisk=cos
part swap --fstype=swap --size=1600 --onvirtualdisk=cos
part /var --fstype=ext3 --size=4096 --onvirtualdisk=cos
part /home --fstype=ext3 --size=2048 --onvirtualdisk=cos
part /tmp --fstype=ext3 --size=1024 --onvirtualdisk=cos
part /opt --fstype=ext3 --size=2048 --onvirtualdisk=cos
#########################################################
...also, a good guide is below
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/05/27/partitioning-your-esx-host-part-ii/