ESXi 7 parition Layout

[JimKnopf99]

Hello Forum,

i have a question about esxi 7 partition layout. After doing some research i saw that there is a new partiton layout and also a new requirement for sizing the disk.

We are using boot from SAN with a size of 20 GB LUN. Recomended size for booting from disk is 32 gb. 

Now i am thinking of do i have to resize the disk and when resizing how does esxi recognize the new size? Or is 20 gb fine and i can run it with this size as well.

Thanks for any hints on this.

Frank

[Duncan Epping]

I would recommend reading this:

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2020/05/vsphere-7-esxi-system-storage-changes.html

and: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2020/07/vsphere-7-system-storage-when-upgrading.html 

[JimKnopf99]

At the end of the first link, the recomended size is min 32 gb

"

• 32GB for other boot devices like hard disks, or flash media like SSD or NVMe devices."

So now, my size is 20 gb. I could easily change the luns size. but how adopt that to esxi? How to resize the esxi partition size?

Or is there a script that automaticaly change the paritions if more size is available. 

Thanks

[JimKnopf99]

Ok.

did the following.

1. grow san disk
2. ssh to esx
3. get disk path to OSDATA LUN 
   1. df -h show the disk path
4. get partition of vmfs-l
   1. vmkfstools -P /vmfs/volumes/OSDATA-60cc............ 
   2. normaly partition 7
5. Because of add space you need to correct partition table
   1. partedUtil fixGpt /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600a098........
6. Get usable sectors of the disk
   1. partedUtil getUsableSectors /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600a09
7. resize partition
   1. partedUtil resize /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600a098... <partition_number> <starting sector>  <end sector>
8. grow file system
   1. vmkfstools --growfs /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.60....:<partition_number>  /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.60....:<partition_number>

Frank

[Mitchel Rogers]

The only constant here is the system boot partition. ... When a secondary high-endurance storage device is not available, VMFS-L Locker partition is created on USB or SD devices, but this partition is used only to store ROM-data. RAM-data is stored on a RAM disk.