ESX Drive Partitioning

[sultanad]

I am setting up a new ESX host and would like to know what is the best practice for partioning the hard drive. The hard drive are 72GB in size, and the VMFS volumes will be on a SAN. So no real need for vmfs volumes on the local drive. I have read the following to be a recommendation, and just wanted to know your thoughts on it?

Primary

Mount Point Format Size

/boot ext3 250MB

Swap 1600MB

/ ext3 5GB Min

Extended

/vmfs don't create

/home ext3 512MB

/tmp ext3 2GB min

/var/log ext3 min 2GB use /var

/opt ext3 min 2GB

vmkore 100MB

[depping]

vSphere: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/05/27/partitioning-your-esx-host-part-ii/

ESX 3.x: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/10/23/partitioning-your-esx/

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

-

---

Blogging: http://www.yellow-bricks.com

Twitter:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[olegarr]

Check out this references: (at your case look at ESX Install)

Nice, compact and easy...

Thanks,

Olegarr

[RParker]

That looks good, the interesting part is var/log is for problems. You should not have problems with ESX, if you do that needs to be addressed, and problems means more logs. A well designed system should not need a large /var/log folder, hence catch 22.

The rest of it looks good. There is less importance for this with ESX 4.0 since your swap will probably not even get used, considering all the new machines are in excess of 32G of RAM.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I always create the following in addition to what is already there.

/home

/var

/tmp

You need /home to pass some security scanners, /var is where other things BESIDES logfiles go that you will need logfiles (already in /var/log partition) to debug and /tmp.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, Virtualization Practice Analyst[/url]
Now Available: 'VMware vSphere(TM) and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment'[/url]
Also available 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise'[/url]
[url=http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blog_Roll]SearchVMware Pro[/url]|Blue Gears[/url]|Top Virtualization Security Links[/url]|Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast[/url]