which disksize is required so that the esxi-installer starts to create a VMFS volume ?

[continuum]

I have to install a bunch of SAN based ESXi5.
Question: when I size the LUNs I want to make them large enough to make room for future updates but so small that no local VMFS volume is created.

I guess there is a fixed value and if the LUN is larger than that a VMFS volume is created.

Does anybody know this value ?

[Troy_Clavell]

for ESXi 5GB should be more than sufficient.  Are you installing on local disk and want to use the remaining as a local VMFS volume?

[continuum]

Hi Troy
I want to install the ESXi into SAN LUNs.
And I dont want local VMFS volumes inside those SAN LUNs.

The customer wanted to create 32GB LUNs but I told them that that would be a waste.
So I just made some experiments and your suggestion is spot on.

If I create the LUN with 5Gb the installer does not create a VMFS-volume.
If I create the LUN 5.5 Gb I get a small VMFS volume.

So it is safe to assume that 5Gb is the max value if you dont want a local VMFS.

[a_p_]

From the 5GB, only 1GB is used for the Hypervisor and ~4GB are used for the scratch partition. If there's not enough disk space to create a scratch partition you may need to configure the scratch location in the ESXi host's settings. Depending on the storage system and how it calculates 5 GB (base 2 - 5120MB or base 10 - 5000MB) there may not be enough disk space to create the scratch partition though.

André