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gparker
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Recommended ESX OS partitions on HP Proliant servers

Hi, I usually install ESX 3.5 on Dell servers. There's an "ESX server deployment on Dell PowerEdge Servers" guide on Dell's website that discusses Dell's suggested Disk Partitioning during the installation of ESX. For example, Dell suggests that /boot be 100MB, / be minimum 10GB, vmkcore be 102MB etc.

I will soon be installing ESX 3.5 onto some HP Proliant BL490c blade servers and I tried to locate a similar guide toHP's recommended/suggested partitioning onHP's website, but no luck as yet. Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

George.

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VMmatty
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

To be honest I don't think you really need a special guide for HP servers vs. Dell servers. How much internal storage do you have on those blades? I would be willing to bet the recommendations in the Dell guide work just as well in HP.

I usually do something like:

/boot - 255MB

/ - 8GB

swap - 1600MB

/var - 8GB

/tmp - 2GB

/opt - 2GB

/vmkcore - 100MB

Matt | http://www.thelowercasew.com | @mattliebowitz
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gparker
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi VMmatty, I'm not sure yet how much internal storage there is in those HP blade servers. I believe that the servers will only have the option of booting from a USB stick (i.e., ESXi) or internal solid state drive(s). I assuming that if the SSD's have enough capacity, I can install ESX onto them in the same way that I'd install ESX onto local HDD's....?

I take your point about "ESX doesn't really care whether it's being loaded onto a Dell vs HP server, the partitioning scheme should be the same", but I was just wondering if there happens to be some sort of "HP best practice" guide to ESX deployment, I don't want to go against any best practices if they exist.

George.

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VMmatty
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I haven't really looked through this, but this might be of some help to you. I'm having some trouble downloading it at the moment but you might have better luck..

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/getdocument.aspx?docname=4AA1-9894ENW.pdf

It's titled "Best practices for VMware ESX 3.5 using c-Class Blades, EVA, and Virtual Connect White Paper"

Matt | http://www.thelowercasew.com | @mattliebowitz
gparker
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Cool, thanks.

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TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership

with the disk capactity of local storage today,

personally I would have a larger /boot directory I utilise 512MB now.

I also have a /var and a /var/log partition.

/opt is usually used for third party tools like APC, so if not needed you can leave off. I add it for historical purposed, and also if later Admins or policy changes it is already there.

the same is the case with /tmp and /home

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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

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
Carl_Le_Beuvant
Contributor
Contributor

gparker

How are you getting on with your BL490C's? Have you got them in production yet? I have just taken delivery of 2 x 490c's, just waiting for the extra RAM and Quad port mezzaine cards to arrive.

Looking forward to seeing how they fare with our older DL580G4 servers.

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gparker
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Carl,

Thanks for asking. I will begin the ESX installs on the BL490c G6's on 28th July. We've decided to go with vSphere4, so it will be interesting to see how things work out.

One thing for you to watch out for:- Our c7000 blade chassis contains a pair of Flex-10 switches in bays 1 & 2 and a pair of fibre-channel pass-thru modules in bays 3 & 4. But our BL490c's arrived with thir Qlogic FC HBA's in the wrong mezzanine slot. The Qlogic card was trying to connect to bays 1 & 2! We had to remove the lids from each BL490c and move the Qlogic daughter card to the other slot so it would correctly interface with the FC pass-thru modules and everything was sweet.

Regards,

George.

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ericsowa
Contributor
Contributor

We just tried esx 3.5 update 4 on the bl 490c g6 servers and after install in VC we can't see the local storage controller or the SSD Drives.

Our config has 1 HBA card and 1 DUAL port nic card so we can't support the raid card. Has anyone run into these issues before.

You can't raid the internal SSD cards since there is no raid support if you need the extra 2 nic's and the FC Cards.

Any ideas?

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