Scratch partition too small for VMware ESXi host

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

The configured scratch partition is not large enough to contain all core dumps, logs, debug files, and other diagnostic files that might need to be stored on the scratch partition during the lifetime of the VMware ESXi host.

For example, the default scratch partition that was configured during the installation might not be large enough for hosts with more than 1 TB of physical memory.

Note: The default scratch partition created upon install is 4GB. The partition is formatted in FAT16, which has a 4GB partition maximum.

Impact: vm-support might run out of disk space when collecting support files. The automatic core dump extraction after an ESXi PSOD might not work, as a consequence core dumps might not be contained in vm-support bundles.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x

Resolution

Point the scratch target to a VMFS partition with the minimum of the recommended size of free disk space. The recommended partition size is stated in the event message. For example:

Size of scratch partition <UUID> is too small. Recommended scratch partition size is 4096 MB."

For more information, see Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi 4.x and 5.x (1033696).

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

• 日本語: スクラッチ パーティションが VMware ESXi ホストに対して小さすぎる (2145541)