High Disk Usage Alert on ESXi OS Partition Due to Stale Coredump File

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

^{A disk usage alert is triggered on an ESXi host OS partition, typically mounted under: /vmfs/volumes/<UUID>}

^{When running the following command on the ESXi host:}

^{du -ch /vmfs/volumes/<UUID>}

^{You may observe that the vmkdump directory is consuming space in gigabytes, primarily due to a large dump file.}

Environment

^{VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x} 

^{VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x} 

Cause

^{The issue is caused by a stale core dump file that was generated during a previous system event or crash and was not automatically removed. This file continues to consume space on the OS partition, leading to disk usage alerts.}

Resolution

^{To resolve the high disk usage and clean up the stale coredump file:}

1. ^{Unconfigure the current coredump file setting:}

^{esxcli system coredump file set --unconfigure}

2. ^{Delete the stale dump file:}

 rm -rf /vmfs/volumes/<datastore-name>/<dumpfile-name>

3. ^{Reconfigure the coredump file (optional but recommended):}

^{esxcli system coredump file set --configure}

^{esxcli system coredump file set -p /vmfs/volumes/<datastore-name>/<new-dumpfile-name>}

4. ^{Verify configuration:}

^{esxcli system coredump file list}

Additional Information

• ^{Deactivate and Delete a Core Dump File – Broadcom TechDocs}
• ^{Configuring ESXi Coredump to File – KB 314320}