Often I get ask what the ESX console partition sizes should be. Below is my recommendations with reason’s:

/boot – 250Mb
/ – 10000Mb
/var – 3000Mb
/tmp – 2000Mb
swap – 1600Mb
core – 100Mb

To explain:
/boot : This is where your kernel files are located. 100Mb should be enough, but if you need to create a new kernel (one that have for example a different queue depth for the HBA), you might need some more space in /boot for the new file.
/ : This is your root file system. 5gig should be enough, but if you loaded agents (IBM/Dell/HP) inside the service console it might not be enough.
/var : Logs are located in “/var/log” and also some core dumps in “/var/core”. Some documentation suggest to make a “/var/log”, but this will then exclude “/var/core”. “/var/core” then resides inside “/” and could fill “/” up.
/tmp : Same here, if “/tmp” is not created it could fill up “/”
swap : “swap” is a partition type and is used for swap space for the service console. Since the service console’s memory limit is 800Mb, the “swap” partition should not be more that 1600Mb(Double that of memory).
core : The ESX kernel is able to write a core dump if it crashes. This core dump records the state of the process at the time of the crash

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