Hello!
As I've understood, the ESXi-install media sometimes creates a 4G FAT16-partition for /scratch and the rest of the available space is used for creating a default-datastore. Sometimes it doesn't create anything*. When it doesn't /scratch is a link to /tmp/scratch and I suppose /tmp is cleared at every reboot.
When one wants to use HA one must have a swapfile. If your ESXi-install created a scratch-partition then the very same partition also holds a "uwswap"-file. If however /scratch is linked to /tmp/scratch you do not have a swapfile. In that case you must first have a datastore and place the swap-file on that volume. You cannot use /tmp/scratch for holding your swap-file since there's nowhere near that amount of space available.
Having talked to our external ESX-consultant he could not answer why this 4G FAT16-scratch-partition is created only sometimes (why?). Should/could one create her own FAT16 scratch-partition within ESXi? Or would it be preferred to use a tool like GParted-LiveCD to do so? Would ESXi recognize this partition at boot and mount it?
*It doesn't really create any partitions other than scratch and datastore, iirc it just copies the disk-layout on block-level with dd, please correct me if I'm wrong.
I know this is a lot of questions but the documentation on this area is lacking in all aspects.
Thanks in advance! All pointers and suggestions are highly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Tanel
P.S: I just wrote a 4 times longer text and happened to press the wrong button, it's all gone. >.<
