VMware VS4-ENT-PL-A - vSphere Enterprise Plus Setup Manual page 260

vSphere Installation and Setup
About the Scratch Partition
For new installations of ESXi, during the autoconfiguration phase, a 4GB VFAT scratch partition is created if
the partition is not present on another disk.
N Partitioning for hosts that are upgraded to ESXi 5.x from ESXi versions earlier than version 5.0 differs
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significantly from partitioning for new installations of ESXi 5.x. See the vSphere Upgrade documentation.
When ESXi boots, the system tries to find a suitable partition on a local disk to create a scratch partition.
The scratch partition is not required. It is used to store vm-support output, which you need when you create
a support bundle. If the scratch partition is not present, vm-support output is stored in a ramdisk. In low-
memory situations, you might want to create a scratch partition if one is not present.
For the installable version of ESXi, the partition is created during installation and is selected. VMware
recommends that you do not modify the partition.
N To create the VMFS volume and scratch partition, the ESXi installer requires a minimum of 5.2GB of
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free space on the installation disk.
For ESXi Embedded, if a partition is not found, but an empty local disk exists, the system formats it and
creates a scratch partition. If no scratch partition is created, you can configure one, but a scratch partition is
not required. You can also override the default configuration. You might want to create the scratch partition
on a remote NFS mounted directory.
N The installer can create multiple VFAT partitions. The VFAT designation does not always indicate
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that the partition is a scratch partition. In some cases, a VFAT partition can simply lie idle.
Set the Scratch Partition from the vSphere Web Client
If a scratch partition is not set up, you might want to configure one, especially if low memory is a concern.
When a scratch partition is not present, vm-support output is stored in a ramdisk.
Prerequisites
The directory to use for the scratch partition must exist on the host.
Procedure
1 From the vSphere Web Client, connect to the vCenter Server.
2 Select the host in the inventory.
3 Click the Manage tab.
4 Select Settings.
5 Select Advanced System Settings.
The setting ScratchConfig.CurrentScratchLocation shows the current location of the scratch partition.
6 In the field ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation, enter a directory path that is unique for this
host.
7 Reboot the host for the changes to take effect.
260 VMware, Inc.