ESXi 4.x df command shows visorfs at 100% usage, or available space is a negative value

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The VMware ESXi 4.x host shows visorfs at 99% or over 100% usage
• The VMware ESXi 4.x host shows a very low or negative value for available space on the visorfs filesystem.
  
  For example, the output of the df command appears similar to:
  
  Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
visorfs 353604 355644 -2040 101% /
vfat 4192960 65536 4127424 2% /vmfs/volumes/uuid
vmfs3 104595456 103008256 1587200 98% /vmfs/volumes/uuid
vmfs3 104595456 102198272 2397184 98% /vmfs/volumes/uuid
[...]
  
  For more information on checking free disk space, see Investigating disk space on an ESX or ESXi host (1003564).

disk-space scratch-partition

Environment

VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded

Resolution

This issue occurs when the scratch configuration for the ESXi host does not point to an existing datastore. If the scratch space is placed on a ramdisk, and the space becomes exhausted, these symptoms may be seen.

To resolve this issue, configure a persistent scratch location on an existing datastore. This requires a reboot to take effect. For more information, see Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi (1033696).

After modifying the scratch configuration, run the df command to verify that the value for visorfs is less than 100%.

Additional Information

Investigating disk space on an ESX or ESXi host
Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi 4.x/5.x/6.x