Resizing partitions?

[clicker666]

I've got ESX 3.5 installed for testing on a 500 GB SATA drive. My partition sizes seem a little odd to me though:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda2 4.9G 1.3G 3.4G 28% /

/dev/sda1 99M 26M 69M 28% /boot

none 132M 0 132M 0% /dev/shm

/dev/sda7 2.0G 84M 1.8G 5% /var/log

/vmfs/devices 218G 0 218G 0% /vmfs/devices

/vmfs/volumes/47f5f7d3-c212db51-0cad-001b210faf99 66G 35G 31G 52% /vmfs/volumes/esx1:storage1

I don't know why there is so much space assigned to /vmfs/devices and so little assigned to /vmfs/volumes. Is there anyway to grow the volumes partition? How much space do I really need in devices?

Also, my HP controller should be in soon, and I will be switching to an array. Would I be correct in guessing that the easiest way to move from the single SATA drive to the array is to make the array boot first, reinstall ESX on the array, and transfer the old VMs from the SATA to the array?

[RParker]

> easiest way to move from the single SATA drive to the array is to make the array boot first, reinstall ESX on the array, and transfer the old VMs from the SATA to the array?

Yes.

and since devices is a physical mount not LVM, no way to resize. I don't know why it's so big.

[clicker666]

I'm not a big Linux user, but would I be safe in guessing that Gparted CD probably wouldn't help me with this?

My new system will have 1 TB of disk space. What would you recommend for partitions?

[azn2kew · Accepted solution]

Here's a general use of partitions listed and you can increase it as you like. You can change the / partition to 6144MB if you want and the remaining disk space is partition with VMFS and autofill it.

Mount Point	Partition	Size	Description
/dev/sda (Primary)
/boot	ext3	250 MB	Change for additional space for upgrades
N/A	swap	1600 MB	Change for maximum service console swap size
/	ext3	6144 MB	Change for additional space in root
/dev/sda (Extended)
/var	ext3	4096 MB	Create partition to avoid overfilling root with log files
/tmp	ext3	1024 MB	Create partition to avoid overfilling root with temporary files
/opt	ext3	2048 MB	Create partition to avoid overfilling root with VMware HA log files
/home	ext3	1024 MB	Create partition to avoid overfilling root with agent / user files
	vmkcore	100 MB	Pre-configured
	Free Space	(Optional) Auto-configured and used for local VMFS-3 volume (needed for virtual machines running Microsoft's Clustering Software.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems LLC.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[jgalexan]

During the install process you do not assign space to the /vmfs/volumes partition. This space is created from any space that is left behind after allocating space to all of the OS partitions. Chances are high on my gues that devices was the last item you selected to create and you made it larger (or close to that). You are correct, you do not need that much space for devices. You stated that you will be creating a new array. If that is a local array, then yes make that your boot item and reinstall.

There are ways to go in and resize partitions, but it is much easier to reinstall and choose the options you want during install.