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KetchAdmin
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ESX 3.5 Installation - Advanced partitioning

I am in the process of reinstalling ESX 3.5. I want to do advanced partitioning and have a few questions before proceeding with the install. We have about 70GB of local storage and 1.3TB of storage on a Lefthand ISCSI SAN. This is how i want my partitioning on the local drive :

/boot 250MB Primary Fixed

/ 5120MB Primary Fill up to 10240MB

Swap 1600MB Extended Fixed

/var/log 2048MB Extended Fill up to 4096MB

/tmp 1024MB Extended Fill up to 1024MB

/opt 2048MB Extended Fill up to 2048MB

/home 1024MB Extended Fill up to 1024MB

vmkcore 100MB Extended fixed

Which still leaves about 50GB of free space. I want to use about 20GB to 25GB of the space as a VMFS3 partitions for testing or if we decide to do clustering later down the line and leave the rest as free space. but i want to create VMFS3 partition using the VIC and not during installation (so it will be 64k aligned) . but the issue is, i want this to be a primary partition, but during installation process the first three partitions are automatically assigned as Primary, how do i save one of the primary partitions, so i can assign it to the VMFS3 partition when i create it after the installation is completed using the VIC.

From what I've read so far these are the best practices for partitioning, any advice and help would be appreciated.

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jasonboche
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Why do you want your VMFS partition to be primary? In a nutshell, it can't be unless it's on a separate disk. The reason is that there can only be 4 per drive. The first 3 will be taken up by /, /boot, and swap (these are best practices). The 4th will be consumed by a extended partition which will contain the logical partitions for the remaining mount points.

As far as your custom sizes, they'll work. / is a little overboard. I generally go 4096 for /tmp but your size is up to you. With all the disk space you have, I'm not sure why you are bothering with the "grow" component of your partitioning. I don't do that. Helps guard against fragmentation.






[i]Jason Boche[/i]

[VMware Communities User Moderator|http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2444][/i]

VCDX3 #34, VCDX4, VCDX5, VCAP4-DCA #14, VCAP4-DCD #35, VCAP5-DCD, VCPx4, vEXPERTx4, MCSEx3, MCSAx2, MCP, CCAx2, A+

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jasonboche
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Why do you want your VMFS partition to be primary? In a nutshell, it can't be unless it's on a separate disk. The reason is that there can only be 4 per drive. The first 3 will be taken up by /, /boot, and swap (these are best practices). The 4th will be consumed by a extended partition which will contain the logical partitions for the remaining mount points.

As far as your custom sizes, they'll work. / is a little overboard. I generally go 4096 for /tmp but your size is up to you. With all the disk space you have, I'm not sure why you are bothering with the "grow" component of your partitioning. I don't do that. Helps guard against fragmentation.






[i]Jason Boche[/i]

[VMware Communities User Moderator|http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2444][/i]

VCDX3 #34, VCDX4, VCDX5, VCAP4-DCA #14, VCAP4-DCD #35, VCAP5-DCD, VCPx4, vEXPERTx4, MCSEx3, MCSAx2, MCP, CCAx2, A+
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RParker
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i want this to be a primary partition, but during installation process the first three partitions are automatically assigned as Primary

Curious, why do you want it to be the primary parition? This isn't windows, it doesn't need to be first.

VMFS is part of the extended parittion anyway, so you can't change it or make it primary. But I still am wondering, why primary partition is so important? ESX isn't a normal Linux install.. they do things in a proprietary way, so it shouldn't be treated like any other OS install.

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KetchAdmin
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Jason - thank you for your quick response. I initially wanted /, /boot and swap to be primary partitions but some one from VMware techsupport asked me to go with the default partitioning scheme the installer provides, and alter the sizes as needed. So if i understand you correctly, i can create the VMFS3 partition after the installation is complete as an extended partition using the VI Client. Also thanks for your recommendations on the size of the /tmp partition and i will go ahead and make all the partition as fixed size partition. one other question, should i go ahead and leave the remaining space as free space or should i assign it all to the VMFS3 or some other partition? Thanks again...

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jasonboche
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You can create a VMFS volume after the ESX installation using the VIC or the service console so long as you leave some unpartitioned space. If you're using hardware RAID, you also have the ability to carve out just enough disk space for the ESX installation, then carve out a separate array just for the VMFS partition.

On your other question, For the last few years I've had the issue now of too much disk space left over to waste because my drive sizes are larger than needed. Get used to the concept that there is really nothing to do with that left over 20-50GB of disk. If you want to make it VMFS for fooling around on a rainy day - fine. On my installations, I create a mount point called /vmimages and assign all remaining disk space to that. It's a carryover habit from the old days of ESX2 but it's not needed any longer in ESX3.

Jas






[i]Jason Boche[/i]

[VMware Communities User Moderator|http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2444][/i]

VCDX3 #34, VCDX4, VCDX5, VCAP4-DCA #14, VCAP4-DCD #35, VCAP5-DCD, VCPx4, vEXPERTx4, MCSEx3, MCSAx2, MCP, CCAx2, A+
RParker
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one other question, should i go ahead and leave the remaining space as free space or should i assign it all to the VMFS3 or some otherpartition?

You can use up all the space, you won't need it for anything else, unless you want larger sizes elsewhere. Also by creating the VMFS from the VIC you can change the block size, but your VMFS volumes are small, so it won't make a difference. It only makes a difference in VMFS volumes over 256 g to allow for larger VMDK files.

KetchAdmin
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Thank you both for your quick and informative replies, i appreciate it very much. this is exactly the information i was looking for. I will go head and proceed with the installation and worry about how to allocate the free space later.

Jason -- is /vmimages partition where you put .iso and other commonly used files so you can easily access them?

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jasonboche
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Thank you both for your quick and informative replies, i appreciate it very much. this is exactly the information i was looking for. I will go head and proceed with the installation and worry about how to allocate the free space later.

Jason -- is /vmimages partition where you put .iso and other commonly used files so you can easily access them?

It used to be, and it still can be. It's just an ext3 mount point. You can put anything there that you want to. If you don't have shared storage, that's likely where you'll put your .isos and virtual floppy images. Of course then you need to have a copy on each host for convenience. But since I use shared storage, I only maintain 1 centralized copy of my .isos and .flps on the shared storage that all hosts can have access to. Thus the extinction of a local host based /vmimages usage.






[i]Jason Boche[/i]

[VMware Communities User Moderator|http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2444][/i]

VCDX3 #34, VCDX4, VCDX5, VCAP4-DCA #14, VCAP4-DCD #35, VCAP5-DCD, VCPx4, vEXPERTx4, MCSEx3, MCSAx2, MCP, CCAx2, A+
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