VMWare: vSphere / ESX 4 Server Partitioning
This will review the partitioning scheme that I am currently using for VMware vSphere (ESX 4). For information concerning partitioning for VMware ESX 3.x, please refer to the following link:
http://blog.colovirt.com/2008/10/31/vmware-esx-server-partitioning/
The majority of the partitioning structure is the same what was used for 3.x. The only real changes is the fact that the installation process auto-creates two of the partitions that were to be manually created on 3.x. Those two partitions are:
As in the 3.x structure, again I still maintain that creating a seperate mount point for /var/core should be used. For the reasons stated below:From the 3.x post
“I have had a few servers core dump and drop over 5 gigs of data to /var/core. Before, per “best practices” a vendor recommended around 4 gigs for /var. I upped that to 6 gigs originally, but after 2 servers had /var 100% utilized I and revising that. /var is still 6 gigs but /var/core has been broken out into its own mount point. 15 gigs is a little high, but these servers had raid 1 – 73 gig hard drives. At least now if the servers core dump it will affect only its mount point. I highly recommend doing this!”
Below is how I am partitioning vSphere 4 servers
| Mount Point | Size(m) | Partition type |
| / | 10240 | Primary |
| swap | 1600 | Primary *max |
| /var | 6142 | Extended |
| /var/core | 15360 | Extended |
| /opt | 2048 | Extended |
| /home | 2048 | Extended |
| /tmp | 1024 | Extended |
Notes: Yellow-Bricks (Duncan Epping), as well as VMETC have good articles as well.
are you using a SAN storage for your VMs or are you storing them on the local host itself.
Anonymous said this on November 19, 2009 at 3:33 am
I am using fibre connected SAN(s) for the VMware storage here. My home lab runs ESX4i and uses software ISCSI to a Linux Openfiler server for storage.
Kevin Goodman said this on November 19, 2009 at 11:06 am