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Knowledge Base

Best Practices for Disk Allocation within VMware ESX Server 1.x (904)

Last Updated: 4/13/2017Categories: Total Views: 3947Language:
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What is the best way to set up locally attached hard disks when using VMware ESX Server for best manageability and most redundancy?

Solution

The issues:

With most smaller form factor servers today, there is not a lot of locally attached storage. There are usually at least two internal hard drives where the operating system is stored, and then most of the data is stored on some type of external storage (external SCSI or SAN). These drives can be as small as 9 GB, though 18 and 32 GB drives are normal, and 72 GB drives are now becoming more popular.

For best redundancy, you can mirror these two disks. This usually leaves either 18 or 36 GB of useable space available. If you have more disk space available, then you can adjust the partition sizes listed below accordingly.

The locally attached disk layout:

Label

18 GB

36 GB

Type

Notes

/boot

50 MB

50 MB

EXT2

Holds the kernel image used for booting

Swap

128-512 MB

128-512 MB

Swap

This is the swap partition for the Console OS (Service Console) only, and NOT the swap file for the ESX Server.

/

1800 MB

1800 MB

EXT2

Holds the Console OS (Service Console) and VMware ESX Server kernel. See Note 1.

/vmimages

6-12 GB

6-24 GB

EXT2

Holds both ISO image files and template exported virtual disk Images. See Note 2.

/home

1800 MB

1800 MB

EXT2

Holds the Individual Virtual Machine Configuration Files. See Note 3

vmkdump

50 MB

50 MB

VMware Core Dump

Stores information generated if the VMkernel crashes.

vmswap

2-8 GB

8-24 GB

VMFS

Holds the Memory Swap File and Helper VM. See Note 4

The rest of the virtual disk files for the running virtual machines will be stored on another disk volume; either on this machine, or on external storage.
Notes:

Some management applications write to /tmp and /var. These directories may be in the root file system, and there is a risk that someone might install a tool in the Console OS (Service Console) that will fill the file system. If this is the case, a separate /tmp and /var partition may be created to protect the / (root) file system.

The /vmimages partition can hold ISO9660 images of CDROMs as well as template exported virtual disks. This is also a slush space that can be used to assist in moving virtual disk images around (exporting the virtual disks to this partition, and then copying them to the destination machine or storage area), and also possibly for backup purposes.

Along with the configuration file and their associated directories, logging and suspend files will default to the configuration file directory. If a user accidentally suspends a virtual machine unnecessarily, the suspend file will not fill up the / partition, which will cause issues with the server if /home is in a separate filesystem.

The size of the swap file can be up to the size of installed memory plus any overcommitment. The helper virtual machine is a virtual machine that is created and used by an administrator to attach virtual disk drives to if there needs to be repair to the underlying filesystem of another virtual machine. No suspend files would be saved to this partition unless you have a lot of free space after disk allocation.

The big decision-making point is how to allocate the >=12 GB between /vmimages and the local VMFS. Even if you allocate 4 GB for VMkernel swap on a 4 GB system, and 1.5 GB for a helper virtual machine, you still have 6.5 GB for template exported virtual disks and ISOs on an 18 GB disk.

The default location for virtual machine suspend files is still the home directory of the owning user, even though with version 1.5 you get better performance when you suspend to a VMFS.

Home directories are also where core files from monitor crashes will be created—virtual machine logs may also land here.

Detectable by VMware SkylineTM

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