ESX3 Primary Partitions

[orring]

I have recently stated a new job where I have been asked to review and provide comment on some new ESX servers that have been deployed.

They have the following partition information.

boot 100MB Primary

/ 10000MB Primary

VMFS 50000MB Primary

/var/log 5120MB Extended

swap 2048MB Extended

vmkcore 110MB Extended

Ignoring the sizes and mount point best practices, my question is, the Swap partition is not set to a primary partition, I realise this is recomemded but will it have any implications if it is left like this. Also should VMFS local volumes be primary or extended, can not remember what the default is for this?

Regards

Graeme

[avarcher · Accepted solution]

This is the default, it should be easier for you to resize the swap partition when it is a logical than if it was a primary, for example if you need to change the SC RAM. Swap as a primary was the default in ESX2.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Note that the swap partition should only be a maximum of 2GB. Any space over 2GBs is unused. You can have multiple swap partitions or use swap files on other partitions, but greater than 2GB is ignored. It can be extended or primary, either works.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[avarcher]

And you could even say that the maximum Service Console swap partition should be 1600MB following the rule of thumb, swap=2xRAM, as the Service Console RAM is maximum 800MB.