VMware ESX 4.0 Disk Layout

After having just sat the vSphere “What’s New” course, I have the itch to start writing again! As many of you may already be aware, vSphere has some slick new features and I am excited to start writing again about these new topics as well as Microsoft Hyper-V R2 and Citrix XenServer! Now for the post!

One area that was not really covered in the course was “what are the best practices for partitioning vSphere”. Things are very different now, unlike in previous versions, the COS is now a vmdk file and runs on a VMFS volume. Just in case you were wondering, the COS VMDK is stored on the local VMFS volume by default in the following location: esxconsole-/esxconsole.vmdk. As you would imagine, this will definitely alter the way that you partition your disk, if you are installing from scratch. To install from scratch, the best practice is to partition as follows:

Note: You cannot define the sizes for /boot, vmkcore, or vmfs partitions using manual or graphical installation. Only using a scripted method can you define these values

Required:

Mount Point	Size	Notes
/(root)	5120 MB	This is the VMware recommended value
swap	1600 MB	This is the maximum value. Minimum value is 600 MB
/boot	1.25 GB	This mount point is automatically created and included both /boot and vmkcore partitions. The /boot partition requires 1100 MB of this value
VMFS	1200 MB	This mount point is automatically created and includes the COS vmdk named esxconsole.vmdk
/var/log	4096 MB	Created by default during manual installation. VMware recommends a minimum of 2000 MB
/home	2048 MB	VMware recommends 512 MB
/opt	2048 MB	VMware does not have any recommendation for /opt
/tmp	2048 MB	VMware recommends 1024 MB

So there you have it. Somewhat similar to what we’ve seen in the past, however with a twist in that the COS is now a VMDK!