topic Re: VMware Swap File Autogrow FlexVol volumes in VMware Solutions Discussions

VMware Swap File Autogrow FlexVol volumes

vincent_m — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:03:51 GMT

Hi Everybody,

I have a little question for you guys, how you configure the swap datastore for for your environment ?

I have 3 ESXi 4.1 Server with 48 Gb RAM per ESXi and I have configured the swap datastore with 150 Gb.

I have read in the Best Practice Netapp VMware that's we can configure a option "Autogrow FlexVol volumes"

do you use this option?

regards,

Vince

Re: VMware Swap File Autogrow FlexVol volumes

radek_kubka — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 10:32:01 GMT

Hi Vince and welcome to the Communities!

Autogrowing volumes is a part of a bigger picture of space management, so this is not necessarily specific to vShpere, swap files, etc.

The short answer is: your mileage may vary, as everyone has their own likes / dislikes re space management.

Volume autosize was mainly introduced to address the dilemma re volumes with LUNs & snapshots, where originally the best practice asked people to halve their usable capacity (simply speaking) to guarantee that LUNs will not go offline due to a lack of space in the volume.

There are different ways of achieving pretty much the same goal - e.g. my favourite of oversizing significantly all volumes, setting space guarantee to none (thin provisioning) & monitoring free space on the aggregate level only (not everyone likes this approach though).

Regards,

Radek

Re: VMware Swap File Autogrow FlexVol volumes

vincent_m — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:13:44 GMT

Okay !

So it's for you the good option like I have configured my datastore ?

Regards,

Vince