How to migrate ESXi OSData partition from SD card to existing VMFS partitions

Products

• VMware

Issue/Introduction

This article describes how to migrate the ESXi OSData partition from the SD card to existing VMFS partitions when the ESXi host runs normally without an Install or upgrade situation.

Environment

ESXi 8.0.x

Resolution

To a VMFS datastore subdirectory（root directory of datastore is not permitted）

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update OSData.configuredLocation string /vmfs/volumes/<Datastore_name>/<unique_osdata_directory>

Note: datastore device must be a type which is also supported by OSDATA:  local NVMe/SSD/HDD or remote FCoE or hardware-independent iSCSI (i.e. not software iSCSI)

Detail step:

1. log in to ESXi CLI using root.
2. create a unique OSDATA directory under a specific VMFS Datastore using command: mkdir /vmfs/volumes/<Datastore_name>/<unique_osdata_directory>
3. modify default value path to specific path using command: vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update OSData.configuredLocation string /vmfs/volumes/<Datastore_name>/<unique_osdata_directory>
4. After modification, reboot ESXi host.
5. using command to confirm OSDATA partition has already been updated successfully:
   vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/view OSData.configuredLocation
configstorecli config current get -c "esx" -g "storage" -k "osdata_location"

Additional Information

If after rebooting ESXi host to check OSDATA partition path and encounter the value is " " using vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/view OSData.configuredLocation, please execute the step 3 command again and reboot again, and then check again.