OT: Re: Resizing swap space on VMWare ESX Linux

[Josh Miller]

sunhux G wrote:
> We've over-allocated the swap space on a newly installed
> VMWARE ESX - 6Gb.
> 
> I was told that 800MB is the max & possibly 600MB for
> swap space is sufficient though the VMWare blade comes
> with 32Gb memory.
> 
> How can I reduce the swap space size without reinstalling
> the ESX?

Hi U,

It's really not a big deal that you've over-allocated the swap for your 
ESX install -- it will only take away local disk from your COS which you 
should not be overly dependent upon anyway.  Any virtual machine related 
files should be on shared storage -- in fact, I would recommend that any 
local VMFS filesystems be removed ASAP and not allocated to prevent 
local bus scans when scanning for new filesystems and/or devices from 
Virtual Center.

It's true that 800MB is the maximum amount of RAM that you can allocate 
to your service console, but it is *not* true that you can only allocate 
800MB of swap to your service console, although it doesn't make sense to 
allocate more than 1.6GB of swap to the COS.

I would fix this in my build script and move on, leaving this until a 
better excuse to rebuild this ESX host comes up.  I would *highly* 
recommend allocating 800MB of RAM to all of your ESX hosts to 
accommodate any activity or maintenance that you perform in your virtual 
environment.

(COS = console operating system = service console.)

HTH,
-- 
Josh Miller, RHCE/VCP
Seattle, WA
Linux Solutions Provider
http://itsecureadmin.com/