All You Wanted to Know about ESX Partitions
Here you will find out:
- what is ESX partitions
- when DiskInternals can help you
Are you ready? Let's read!
About ESX partitions
Let’s cover the main partition that applies to the ESX host. Mostly, here will talk about ESX 4.x hosts.
When creating this host, three partitions are formed, namely:
- VMcore partition. Here you can find all the data about system crashes (about 110 MB). This section cannot be changed during installation.
- The /boot partition. Here are the boot files. This partition is located on the disk where the BIOS is located and takes up a lot of space (in the latest versions of the host, it is 1,100 MB).
- VMFS partition (extended). This has all the remaining space and it is suitable for storing information.
The service console is required to manage the ESX Server command line. The minimum space for it is about 8 GB. It can be found in VMFS under the name “esxconsole.vmdk”.
The service console itself is a virtual disk that also has partitions:
- The root partition. This is the most important partition, because it contains the operating system and ESX services, as well as additional user-installed applications and services. The root partition gives rise to other partitions and is their mount point.
Here are some other partitions related to the service console:
- Swap partition for the service console (it contains a swap file, and its size can be up to 1600 MB).
- The /var/log partition. It contains logs that store data on ongoing operations. The size of this partition can reach 2000 MB.
Optional partitions for the service console include:
- The /opt partition - this section is optional; you can create it to store additional vSphere components or any other products.
- The/usr partition is a separate section for storing programs and some data.
- The /home partition is used to save information by other users.
- The /tmp partition is for finding temporary files.
Keep data safe on ESX partitions with VMFS Recovery
DiskInternals VMFS Recovery will help recover data from ESX host partitions.
This unique application has been on the market for over 15 years, and has won the trust of leading IT professionals. VMware data recovery, VMFS recovery, and reading and restoring VMDK files are all possible with this software. You can connect virtual disks to local disks (available in Windows Explorer, etc.). The software quickly and effectively recovers information from both damaged and serviceable disks in VMFS format.
Use the built-in Recovery Wizard to simplify the entire recovery process and automate it. In addition, VMFS Recovery supports Unicode and multi-level folder file names.
Use this walkthrough for DiskInternals VMFS Recovery and the process will go even faster:
- 1. Download and install DiskInternals VMFS Recovery.
- 2. Connect via SSH, if necessary.
- 3. Open the disk (it can be a local disk or SSH).
- 4. After scanning, find the necessary VMDK files and mount the VMDK file.
- 5. Open it and select the View files function to check their integrity.
- 6. The final step is to buy a license to complete the export of data.
The work is done; enjoy!