ESX4i and USB/SD Disk

[regnak]

Hi Folks,

I'm sizing a vSphere Blade solution with Fibre Channel SAN. We're planning on one of two methods to deploy ESX. One is Boot from SAN and the other is using USB/SD memory. The reason for these approaches is to avoid buying lots of local disk storage. However I've not done this before.

My question is in relation to the Host swapfile. Where is the best place to locate this and are there any KB articles I've missed that would help me plan this type of deployment?

In the boot from SAN deployment scenario I assume the swap file is held in the same location as the ESX4i O/S.

In the USB/SD scenario, I think I read somewhere that you create a LUN for all the swapfiles and the ESX hosts each have a folder on this LUN? Is this correct? There's an option in ESX 4i advanced settings I think to set the Host swapfile to use this folder?

Does anyone have any better ideas to avoid using local disks?

Thanks

Mike

[regnak]

Hi,

Found a KB regarding some elements of this:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100417...

This relates to "Host in HA Cluster must have userworld swap enabled"

I just need some feedback on real world experiences and what others are doing to achieve this out there!

Thanks

Michael.

[DSTAVERT · Accepted solution]

You must establish a location for swap when running from USB and no local storage. If nothing is specified ESXi will create the swap space in /tmp which is a ramdisk.