Guest VM Partitioning Best Practices

[Useless1]

Hi,

Just a quick one... when setting up my servers I am doing the following:

C: drive 20GB

😧 drive 20GB + (dependent on app)

I am then installing the applications and data on the D drive.. (Where I am given a choice, some installs put bits like SQL Server Express on the C without my instruction)...

I guess the question I am asking is, should I be doing this or is it better to put the applications on the C drive and just leave the D for data?

[khughes]

You should treat your virtual machines just like physical machines. If you were to place that server on physical hardware, would you create a different raid disk setup for your OS and your App? If the answer is yes, then you should create a .vmdk disk for your c:\ drive and a .vmdk for your d:\ app drive.

• Kyle

[TomHowarth]

As Kyle says, treat your guests as you would a physical machine. Common practice is to have all VMDKs for each guest machine in the same folder structure or lun. This is for ease. There is no issue with having your system drive on a LUN carved out of one particular storage RAID level and your data drive on another LUN carved out of a different RAID level. Just remember the profiles of differing RAID levels.

[AndreTheGiant]

I suggest to make always a single partition on each vmdk file.

It will be more simple extend (in needed) a single partition by simple extending the vmdk file.

Andre

[TomHowarth]

Agreed, one VMDK per partition,

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780136083214]”. Currently available on roughcuts