Creation of Local Datastore post Installation of ESXi 7/8.X

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

A new local datastore is created upon install of ESXi server if boot device is local storage.

Example of local datastore created per ESXi host installation

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

If the ESXi boot device is Local Storage and greater than 142 GB the left over space is formatted with VMFS file system and mounted as a datastore.

Resolution

You can use the ESXi installer boot option systemMediaSize to limit the size of system storage partitions on the boot media. If your system has a small footprint that does not require the maximum of 128 GB of system storage size, you can limit it to the minimum of 32 GB. The systemMediaSize parameter accepts the following values:

• min (32 GB, for single disk or embedded servers)
• small (64 GB, for servers with at least 512 GB of RAM)
• default (128 GB)
• max (consume all available space, for multi-terabyte servers)

The selected value must fit the purpose of your system. For example, a system with 1 TB of memory must use the minimum of 64 GB for system storage. To set the boot option at install time, for example systemMediaSize=small, refer to Enter Boot Options to Start an Installation or Upgrade Script. For more information, see Knowledge Base article Boot option to configure the size of ESXi system partitions.

Additional Information

The installation switch –novmfsondisk can be used to prevent creating a local data store during install.