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ESXi on 11th Gen Intel NUC Pro (Tiger Canyon)

Intel's Tiger Lake-based 11th Gen "Tiger Canyon" NUC Professional series has been launched in Q1 of 2021. In a previous article, I made a quick comparison of the upcoming 11th Gen series NUCs. This article takes a deeper look at their capabilities to run VMware ESXi. VMware does not officially support NUCs but they are ubiquitous in many home labs or test environments. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption, making them a great server for your home lab. The Tiger Canyon is available with i3, i5, and i7 CPUs. The i5 and i7 versions are also available with vPro Support.

  • NUC11TNKv7 / NUC11TNHv7 / NUC11TNHv70L (Intel Core i7-1185G7 vPro - 4 Core, up to 4.8 GHz)
  • NUC11TNKv5 / NUC11TNHv5 / NUC11TNHv50L (Intel Core i5-1145G7 vPro - 4 Core, up to 4.4 GHz)
  • NUC11TNKi7 / NUC11TNHi7 / NUC11TNHi70L (Intel Core i7-1165G7 - 4 Core, up to 4.7 GHz)
  • NUC11TNKi5 / NUC11TNHi5 / NUC11TNHi50L (Intel Core i5-1135G7 - 4 Core, up to 4.2 GHz)
  • NUC11TNKi3 / NUC11TNHi3 / NUC11TNHi30L (Intel Core i3-1115G4 - 2 Core, up to 4.1 GHz)

The Tiger Canyon is Intel's professional line in the 11th Generation. As we didn't have a vPro NUC in the 10th Generation and the 9th series was quite a different approach with a larger chassis, the Tiger Canyon is the actual successor to the 8th Gen Provo Canyon. This system is intended for professional use cases and has some great enhancements for your homelab running ESXi like the expansion bay which allows you to install a second network adapter.

Read More »ESXi on 11th Gen Intel NUC Pro (Tiger Canyon)

ESXi on 11th Gen Intel NUC (Tiger Lake - Panther Canyon)

Intel's Tiger Lake-based 11th Gen Panther Canyon NUC series has been launched in Q1 of 2021. In a previous article, I made a quick comparison of the upcoming 11th Gen series NUCs. This article takes a deeper look at their capabilities to run VMware ESXi. VMware does not officially support NUCs but they are ubiquitous in many home labs or test environments. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption, making them a great server for your home lab. The Panther Canyon is available with i3, i5, and i7 CPUs.

  • NUC11PAKi7/NUC11PAHi7 (Intel Core i7-1165G7 - 4 Core, up to 4.7 GHz)
  • NUC11PAKi5/NUC11PAHi5 (Intel Core i5-1135G7 - 4 Core, up to 4.2 GHz)
  • NUC11PAKi3/NUC11PAHi3 (Intel Core i3-1115G4 - 2 Core, up to 4.1 GHz)

The Panther Canyon is Intel's low-end line in the 11th Generation and the successor to the Frost Canyon. This system is intended to be your standard pc, home theater, or home office workstation. The newly introduced Q-chassis has a 15W wireless fast-charging lid that allows you to charge your smartphone. It is available with i3, i5, or i7 CPU. Like in previous NUC generations, the performance line can be equipped with a 2.5" SATA3 drive.

If you do not need a second 2.5Gbit Adapter or vPro features, this can be an inexpensive alternative to be used in a homelab or for running VMware ESXi.

Read More »ESXi on 11th Gen Intel NUC (Tiger Lake - Panther Canyon)

11th Gen Intel NUC - Which is the best candidate to run ESXi?

Intel has finally announced their 11th Generation NUCs. For the first time, all three product lines are announced at the same time. The NUC series is very popular to be used in homelabs or for running VMware ESXi. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption.

In this article, I'm going to take a look at the 3 different product lines and how they compare to each other and previous NUCs.

Read More »11th Gen Intel NUC - Which is the best candidate to run ESXi?

Will ESXi 7.0 Update 1 run on Intel NUC?

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0 Update 1 is here. If you have Intel NUCs in your homelab you should always be very careful when updating to new ESXi releases as there might be issues. Please always keep in mind that this is not an officially supported platform.

Typically, you see problems with new major releases (eg. the Realtek problem in ESXi 7.0) but this time we seem to run into a problem with 8th Gen NUCs in the 7.0 U1 release. The Intel I219-V (6) network adapter fails to load after upgrading to ESXi 7.0 U1. When you try to do a fresh installation, it fails with the well known "No Network Adapters" error.

To be on the safe side, I'm doing a quick checkup on which NUCs are safe to update and where you have to implement a workaround.

In the meantime: Stay Calm, you can run ESXi 7.0 U1 on the 8th Gen NUC!

Read More »Will ESXi 7.0 Update 1 run on Intel NUC?

11th Gen NUC - First Details on Intels Tiger Canyon NUC

Details on the 11th Generation of Intels NUC have been revealed recently. Intel's NUC series is currently the most used system in the homelab market. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption, making it a perfect system for labs or as a home server.

The 11th Gen is just around the corner and has, compared to its predecessor (Frost Canyon) which did not have outstanding innovations, a lot of cool new features.Read More »11th Gen NUC - First Details on Intels Tiger Canyon NUC

Black Screen when connecting a Monitor to Intel NUC running ESXi

When you are using an Intel NUC or other consumer hardware to run ESXi and connect a monitor to access the DCUI console, you see a black screen only. If you do not have a monitor connected during the boot process, you can't access the screen later. The screen will remain black, making troubleshooting impossible.

In Homelabs you usually do not have a monitor connected to all of your servers but in some cases (ESXi crashes or you need to reconfigure network settings) you want to connect a monitor to your system. A simple trick can help in that situation.Read More »Black Screen when connecting a Monitor to Intel NUC running ESXi

ESXi on AMD Ryzen based ASUS PN50

The long-awaited AMD Ryzen based PN50 by ASUS is finally available. The ESXi Homelab community is constantly growing. When you want to run ESXi in home labs you typically want to have a system that is small, silent, and transportable. To keep costs at a minimum, the power consumption is also a very important factor. The portfolio of Small Form Factor (SFF) Systems, also known as Barebone, Nettop, SoC, or Mini-PC, is enormous. Intel's NUC series is currently the most used system in the homelab market, but I'm always keeping my eyes on its competitors.

Today I'm going to test the ASUS PN50, which is currently rolled out. The PN50 is available with 4 different embedded CPUs:

  • ASUS PN50 Ryzen 7 4800U (8 Core / 16 Threads, up to 4.2 GHz)
  • ASUS PN50 Ryzen 7 4700U (8 Core, up to 4.1 GHz)
  • ASUS PN50 Ryzen 5 4500U (6 Core, up to 4.0 GHz)
  • ASUS PN50 Ryzen 5 4300U (4 Core, up to 4.0 GHz)

Will ESXi run on the Asus PN50?
Yes. It is possible to install ESXi on the Asus PN50. Unfortunately, Asus is using a Realtek based RTL8168 Gigabit Network adapter for the PN50, which will not work with ESXi 7.0. To install ESXi 6.x, you have to use a community-based driver. If you want to use ESXi 7.0, you have to use a USB-based Network adapter.

Read More »ESXi on AMD Ryzen based ASUS PN50

Tips for using USB Network Adapters with VMware ESXi

Running Intel NUCs and other SFF systems with ESXi is a proven standard for virtualization home labs. One major drawback is that most of the available SFF systems only have a single Gigabit network adapter. This might be sufficient for a standalone ESXi with a few VMs, but when you want to use shared Storage or VMware NSX, you totally want to have additional NICs.

This article explains some basics to consider when running USB-based network adapters with ESXi.

Read More »Tips for using USB Network Adapters with VMware ESXi

ESXi VMKUSB NIC Fling adds support for 2.5GBASE-T Adapters

The USB Native Driver Fling, a popular ESXi driver by Songtao Zheng and William Lam that adds support for USB-based Network Adapters, has been updated to version 1.6. The new version has added support for RTL8156 based 2.5GBASE-T network adapters.

Multi-Gigabit network adapters with 5GBASE-T are available for a while, but those 5GbE adapters cost about $100 USD. The new driver allows the usage of 2.5GbE adapters that are available for as low as $25 USD. The driver was released yesterday, and luckily I already own a bunch of 2.5GbE adapters, so I could give it a test drive immediately.

CableCreation USB 3.0 to 2.5 Gigabit LAN Adapter (CD0673)

Read More »ESXi VMKUSB NIC Fling adds support for 2.5GBASE-T Adapters