Actually you cannot resize the OS partition on an existing ESXi installation but you can backup the configuration, reinstall with the right options and restore back the configuration.
You could probably also migrate during the installation process but I haven’t tested that yet.
So, without much typing here we go.
1. Backup the existing ESXi configuration
a. Enable SSH on ESXi host
b. Execute the following command
[h4]c. Bundle can be downloaded at : http://*/downloads/52bfcef4-c345-f4a9-5c7a-98429dc49544/configBundle-eeny.tgz[/h4]
2. Take that URL, replace * with the IP of you ESXi server and download the bundle with your browser.
3. Shutdown ESXi and prepare the installation. At boot, press SHIFT+O and add the following
If you have 7.0 Update 1c:
Values are min, small, default, max – check vmware KB websites for more details but be aware they did a mistake there, it is written 33GB but from what I have seen, min will give you around 25G of VMFSL partition, nowhere near 33GB.
If you have a lower version of if you want to go below min, you need to use an unsupported way:
The example above means VMFSL partition will be around 5GB in size.
4. Once the installation is done, check if VMFSL partition is reduced and if all is good, just restore the previous configuration
a. Enable SSH on ESXi host
b. Copy the bundle to ESXi host
(root@10.8.4.2) Password:
configBundle-eeny.tgz
c. Rename it by removing dash host (-eeny):
d. Put the host in maintenance mode (recommended by VMware, not sure if at this stage is really necessary but it wont hurt doing it)
e. Execute the restore command and be aware the system will reboot as soon as you run it:
Connection to 10.8.4.2 closed by remote host.
Connection to 10.8.4.2 closed.
fmbp16$