Rich Brambley over at vmetc.com has recently published some information taken from the VMware Authorized Consultant guides regarding the recommended partitioning scheme for ESX Server 3.x (not ESX Server 3i). It was good to see that this information closely mirrored the recommended partitioning configuration I’d developed myself.
In fact, I think that the only substantive change in the VAC guidelines from my own guidelines was the size of the swap partition. Anyone care to share their thoughts on the size of the swap partition? How many of you increase the size of the swap partition? How many leave it at the default?
Otherwise, the recommendations to create separate partitions—and the recommended sizes—for /var, /tmp, and /home fell right in line with what I’d already been using. My sizes were typically a bit larger for /tmp and /home, but otherwise were very comparable.
Thanks to Rich for getting that information disseminated.
Tags: ESX, Storage, Virtualization, VMware
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Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Rich
As you probably already know, recommended swap size for esx is twice the service console ram. Since the default allocated ram is 272mb, the default swap is 544 mb. As you add agents to the esx console, for monitoring, backup, etc., you eventually need to change the amount of ram the service console can use to increase performance.
Since the max amount of ram you can give the service console is 800mb, I go ahead and create the swap size at 1600 mb. That way, I’m covered if I am ever max the console ram.
Sure, it pulls some ram from the VMs, but with ESX Clustering and DRS it’s a trade off I can live with.
Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 12:21 am
Duncan
I also set the swap to 1600, which is twice the amount of mem I assign to the service console.
And i hardly ever create a seperate /home, because I also try to never install any agents within the service console.