Freeing disk space on an ESX host

To Free up your ESX server, first you should know what files are stored in different locations.


•The /vmimages folder. This folder is used to store operating system install files such as the VMware Tools or other ISO files.

•The /var/core folder. This folder is used to store crash files for processes on the service console.

•The /var/log folder. This folder stores the majority of the logs for the ESX host.

•Any VMFS volume. These are used to store the virtual machine data.


Run the following command to check which files are using more space on the Disk:


[root@server]# find / -size +10240000c -exec du -h {} \; | less


The following are a list of files that can be deleted from the ESX server

•Old vm-support logs

•Virtual machines that are not being used and are not needed

•ISO files that were copied to the system