I want to use Raid 6 and create two virtual disks (one for ESXi and the other for storage). What is the recommended size for the ESXi container? I've read 5 GB, 6 GB, 10 GB but nothing concrete.
I believe three partitions are created: scratch, diagnostics and vmfs
Any suggestions or link to what Vmware recommends.....
Thanks
ESXi uses 1 GB and will create a 4GB scratch partition so the maximum required is 5GB.
The second virtual disk can be the balance of the array although if the available space is greater than 2TB - 512 bytes you will need to create multiple Virtual Disks in less than 2TB chunks
So there will be a scratch partition of 4GB and an ESXi partition of 1GB, but won't there also be a diagnostics partition?
For future planning, is 5GB's a safe amount to use? I asume anything over 5 GB's on the first virtual disk would turn to VMFS.
5GB is safe and no reason I can think of to make it larger. Personnaly I would install to a USB stick or SD card if your server supports it.
When HP shipped ESXi keys they were only 2GB in size - you then decided yourself where to dumpo the scratch partition.