How to Migrate existing VMware ESXi with Smaller OS partition (VMFSL): systemMediaSize



How to Migrate existing VMware ESXi with Smaller OS partition (VMFSL): systemMediaSize

How to Migrate existing VMware ESXi with Smaller OS partition (VMFSL): systemMediaSize

Hello,

In this demonstration I am doing two main things:
1. migrating ESXi from one disk to another: 2TB MX500 from Crucial;
2. reducing the size of OS partition (VMFSL) from default size which varies according to the disk size.

Regarding the VMFSL partition, so far I got the following sizes, as I said it depends of the disk size:
128GB installation disk – VMFSL = 111.14 GB
256GB installation disk – VMFSL = 119.9 GB

Migration is done with the help of vim-cmd command via ssh and size is reduced with the following boot option: systemMediaSize

NOTE: You will see in the video I said 25GB and on that website is written 33GB for min. The size mentioned in the ESXI article is incorrect. It is not 33GB but 25GB.
There are two articles mentioning 33G:
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.esxi.install.doc/GUID-474D003B-C6FB-465D-BC1B-5FD30F8E2209.html?hWord=N4IghgNiBcIM4E84BcCmBbAsqgJgSzAGU8AvVEAXyA#esxi-70-system-storage-links-2
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/81166
But according to my tests so far, the min size is nowhere near 33GB.