vCenter Appliance (VCSA) 6.x disk (vmdk) list and purpose.

By | October 23, 2015

Recently I have faced an error when I couldn't log in to the vCenter Appliance (VCSA) in my lab using vSphere Client or the Web Client as well. However I could log in to the VAMI interface (as you probably know, re-introduced in VCSA 6.0 U1 🙂 and I saw the following warning:

The /storage/seat filesystem is low on disk space or inodes.

Storage seat filesystem is low on space or inodesI checked a free space of VCSA disks via SSH and as you can see on the below figure - no space on /storage/seat:

Storage seat filesystem is low on space or inodes 0

Based on VMware KB, there are VCSA vmdks with the following purpose:

Disk (VMDK)Default Size
(Tiny VCSA)
Mount PointPurpose
VMDK112GB/ (10GB)
/boot (132MB)
SWAP (1GB)
Boot directory where the kernel images and boot load configurations go
VMDK21.3GB/tmpTemporary directory used to store temporary files generated or used by services from vCenter Server
VMDK325GBSWAPSwap directory used when the system is out of memory to swap to disk
VMDK425GB/storage/coreCore directory where core dumps from VPXD process from the vCenter Server are stored,
VMDK510GB/storage/logLog directory where vCenter Server stores all logs for the environment
VMDK610GB/storage/dbVMware Postgres database storage location
VMDK75GB/storage/dblogVMware Postgres database logging location
VMDK810GB/storage/seatStats, Events and Tasks (SEAT) directory for VMware Postgres
VMDK91GB/storage/netdumpVMware Netdump collector repository that stores ESXi dumps
VMDK1010GB/storage/autodeployVMware Auto Deploy repository that stores the thinpackages used for stateless booting of ESXi hosts.
VMDK115GB/storage/invsvc VMware Inventory Service directory where the xDB, Inventory Service bootstrap configuration file, and tomcat configuration files reside.

The easiest way to solve the problem is resizing of VMDK nr 8.

At first just change size of VMDK by Web Client or vSphere Client:

Storage seat filesystem is low on space or inodes - resize

Then you need to increase the disk inside VCSA (OS). You have two ways:

  • Running the following commands:

shell.set --enabled true
vpxd_servicecfg storage lvm autogrow

or

  • Just restart the VCSA VM.

Storage seat filesystem is low on space or inodes 00Storage seat filesystem is low on space or inodes OK

I recollected that recently I did some changes e.g. how long vCenter should retain task and events...