Is it possible to shrink ESXI OS partition in place while operational, or can the size only be set at the time ESXi is installed?

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Guidance on changing the size of boot partition of the ESXi OS.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x

Resolution

The size of the ESXi OS boot partition should not be altered, modified, or changed after installation.

Doing so deviates from system defaults and may result in unintended behaviors and is not supported.

 

Additional Information

• In the ESXi 7.0, the disk layout was changed from previous version ( ESXi System Storage Changes )
   
• vCenter vSphere UI > Host and Cluster view > Select ESXI Host > Configure >  Storage Devices > Boot device ( check box )  >  Partition Details 
  
  
•  If the boot device is high endurance devices like SSD /HDD  and size is 142GB or larger, the ESXi installer creates a VMFS volume automatically
  
  
  •  For storage media such as USB or SD devices, the ESX-OSData partition is created on a high-endurance storage device such as an HDD or SSD.
  • 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.

 

The ESXi 7 System Storage lay-out only consists of four partitions.

• System boot
  
  • Stores boot loader and EFI modules.
  • Type: FAT16
    
    
• Boot-banks (x2)
  
  • System space to store ESXi boot modules
  • Type: FAT16
    
    
• ESX-OSData
  
  • Acts as the unified location to store extra (nonboot) modules, system configuration and state, and system virtual machines
  • Type: VMFS-L
  • Should be created on high-endurance storage devices