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ESXi on Minisforum Venus Series NPB7 with Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPU

Even before Intel's announcement to drop the NUC Mini-Computer line, having an eye on its alternatives reveals great options for running VMware ESXi. Minisforum is a relatively new vendor that aims to become a top-tier innovator, manufacturer, and supplier of mini PCs. Their Venus Series is very similar to the well-known Intel NUC Series that VMware folks are running in their labs for years. One of the most promising features is that they offer two 2.5Gbit network adapters that are running out of the box with ESXi 8.0 for a very fair price.

SFF systems (also known as Barebone, Nettop, SoC, or Mini-PC) like Miniforums Venus Series or Intel's NUC are not officially supported by VMware but they are very widespread in the home lab community. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption, making them great servers in your home lab. The Minisforum Venus Series is currently available with 13th Gen i5/i7 and 12th Gen i7 CPU, supports up to 64GB of Memory, and has two 2.5Gbit Network Adapters.

  • Minisforum NPB7 (13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700H - 6 x up to 5 GHz / 8 x up to 3.70 GHz)
  • Minisforum NPB5 (13th Gen Intel Core i5-13500H - 4 x up to 4.7 GHz / 8 x up to 3.50 GHz)
  • Minisforum NAB6 (12th Gen Intel Core i7-12650H - 6 x up to 4.70 GHz / 8 x up to 3.50 GHz)

Read More »ESXi on Minisforum Venus Series NPB7 with Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPU

Goodbye to INTEL NUC - What are the Alternatives?

In the VMware Homelab Community, the Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) has been a prominent player for several years. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption, making them a great server for your home lab. With the recently announced deprecation of their NUC Plattform, many homelabbers need an affordable and reliable alternative option for their VMware Homelab.

Luckily, Many vendors jumped on the Small-Form Factor market and there are plenty of great alternatives available. This article takes a quick look at the best alternatives to Intel's NUC.

Read More »Goodbye to INTEL NUC - What are the Alternatives?

ESXi on 13th Gen Intel NUC Pro (Arena Canyon)

Intel's Raptor Lake-based 13th Gen "Arena Canyon" NUC Professional series is now available to purchase. This article takes a deeper look at their capabilities to run a Virtualization lab base on VMware ESXi Hypervisor. While VMware does not officially support NUCs, they are very common in home labs and test environments. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption, making them a great server for running your cost-aware home lab. While there are many NUC-like clones in the market today, the original Intel NUC is still very popular due to its superior endurance. My first "Pro" NUC, the NUC5i5MYHE is currently 8 years old and still runs without problems.

The 13th Gen Arena Canyon is available with i3, i5, and i7 CPUs. The i5 and i7 versions are also available with vPro Support.

  • NUC13ANHv7 / NUC13ANKv7 (Intel Core i7-1370P vPro - 6 x up to 5.20 GHz / 8 x up to 3.90 GHz)
  • NUC13ANHv5 / NUC13ANKv5 (Intel Core i5-1350P vPro - 4 x up to 4.70 GHz / 8 x up to 3.50 GHz)
  • NUC13ANHi7 / NUC13ANKi7 (Intel Core i7-1360P - 4 x up to 5.00 GHz / 8 x up to 3.70 GHz)
  • NUC13ANHi5 / NUC13ANKi5 (Intel Core i5-1340P - 4 x up to 4.60 GHz / 8 x up to 3.40 GHz)
  • NUC13ANHi3 / NUC13ANKi3 (Intel Core i3-1315P - 2 x up to 4.50 GHz / 4 x up to 3.30 GHz)

The Arena Canyon is Intel's professional line in their 13th NUC Generation and the successor to the 12th Gen Wall Street Canyon. This system is intended for professional use cases and has significant enhancements for your homelab running ESXi. As known since the 11th Generation, it has an expansion bay that allows you to install a second network adapter.

Read More »ESXi on 13th Gen Intel NUC Pro (Arena Canyon)

10" Rackmount Kit Collection for Intel NUC (3D Printer Models)

In the last 10 years, I've purchased plenty of Intel NUCs to run my VMware home lab. Keeping all the equipment organized can be challenging. With the help of a 3D printer and a 10 Inch rack, I started building custom rackmount kits for my equipment.

The NUC is attached to the cage using two VESA mounting screws on the bottom. Alternatively, it can be fixed with a velcro strap. The front plate has 6 connectors, in which a keystone adapter can be installed. This allows easy access to connectors from the front. Search for “keystone coupler” to find various options.

With the special 1.5U design, you can install two NUCs in 3U without a gap. The mounting screws will perfectly align with the rail, despite being in half position.

This is a two-piece print that is glued together using a rigid triangle-shaped connector. The two-piece design allows for printing without any supports and you are going to have a nice-looking front (with the Prusa Textured PEI Powder-coated Sheet). To fit the front on the Prusa bed, rotate it by 54°.

I recommend printing in PETG because the weight and heat might deform PLA over time. You might also want to increase the bed temperature if you have problems with the edges lifting up (The edges of the print bed are usually about 5-10°C cooler).

Read More »10" Rackmount Kit Collection for Intel NUC (3D Printer Models)

10" Rackmount Kit for 12th Gen Intel NUC

With all the equipment that is necessary to run a homelab, it can be challenging to keep the space organized. I'm running Intel NUCs in my homelab since the early generations and never found a good solution to organize them, so they were always laying around on a shelf. With the help of a 3D printer and a 10 Inch rack, I started building custom rackmount kits for my equipment.

The first project is my latest 12th Gen Intel NUC and the final result looks like this:

Intel 12th Generation NUC Rackmount Kit

Read More »10" Rackmount Kit for 12th Gen Intel NUC

ESXi on 12th Gen Intel NUC Pro (Wall Street Canyon)

Intel's Alder Lake-based 12th Gen "Wall Street Canyon" NUC Professional series is currently been shipped out. This article takes a deep look at their capabilities to run VMware ESXi. While VMware does not officially support NUCs, they are ubiquitous in many home labs and test environments. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption, making them a great server for running your inexpensive home lab. The Wall Street Canyon is available with i3, i5, and i7 CPUs. The i5 and i7 versions are also available with vPro Support.

  • NUC12WSHv7 / NUC12WSKv7 (Intel Core i7-1270P vPro - 4 x up to 4.80 GHz / 8 x up to 3.50 GHz)
  • NUC12WSHv5 / NUC12WSKv5 (Intel Core i5-1250P vPro - 4 x up to 4.40 GHz / 8 x up to 3.30 GHz)
  • NUC12WSHi7 / NUC12WSKi7 (Intel Core i7-1260P - 4 x up to 4.70 GHz / 8 x up to 3.40 GHz)
  • NUC12WSHi5 / NUC12WSKi5 (Intel Core i5-1240P - 4 x up to 4.40 GHz / 8 x up to 3.30 GHz)
  • NUC12WSHi3 / NUC12WSKi3 (Intel Core i3-1220P - 2 x up to 4.40 GHz / 8 x up to 3.30 GHz)

The Wall Street Canyon is Intel's professional line from their 12th NUC Generation and the successor to the 11th Gen Tiger Canyon. This system is intended for professional use cases and has significant enhancements for your homelab running ESXi. Like the previous generation, it has an expansion bay that allows you to install a second network adapter.

Read More »ESXi on 12th Gen Intel NUC Pro (Wall Street Canyon)

ESXi 7 and 8 Installation fails with "Fatal CPU mismatch on feature"

When you try to install ESXi 7.0 or 8.0 on a system with a 12th Gen Intel CPU, the installation fails with a purple diagnostics screen:

HW feature incompatibility detected; cannot start

Fatal CPU mismatch on feature "Hyperthreads per core"
Fatal CPU mismatch on feature "Cores per package"
Fatal CPU mismatch on feature "Cores per die"

When you try to power on Virtual Machines on 13th Gen Intel CPUs, ESXi crashes with the following PSOD:

GP Exception 13 in world

This problem is caused by the new architecture of Intel CPUs which are equipped with different types of cores - Performance-cores and Efficient-cores. With vSphere 7.0 Update 2, the kernel parameter cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic has been implemented to address the issue. This article explains the manual and automated methods to properly implement the kernel option.

Read More »ESXi 7 and 8 Installation fails with "Fatal CPU mismatch on feature"

ESXi on ASRock Industrial NUC 1100 Series (11th Gen Intel "Tiger Lake" CPU)

ASRock Industrial has a NUC-like small form factor (SFF) system in their portfolio, which is very similar to Intel's latest 11th Gen NUC Series. With the global shortage of microchips the availability of 11th Gen NUCs, especially the Dual-NIC "Pro" models, is still limited. While looking for alternatives, the ASRock Industrial NUC1100 Series came out as a great alternative to the original NUC Series.

SFF systems (also known as Barebone, Nettop, SoC, or Mini-PC) like Intel's or ASRocks's NUC are not officially supported by VMware but they are very widespread in the homelab community. They are small, silent, transportable, and have very low power consumption, making them great servers in your homelab. The ASRock 1100 Series is available with i3, i5, or i7 CPU and supports up to 64GB of Memory. All models are equipped with two Network adapters, one with 1 Gigabit and a second adapter with 2.5 Gigabit support. Both adapters can be used with the latest VMware ESXi 7.0.

  • NUC BOX-1165G7 (Intel Core i7-1165G7 - 4 Core, up to 4.7 GHz)
  • NUC BOX-1135G7 (Intel Core i5-1135G7 - 4 Core, up to 4.2 GHz)
  • NUC BOX-1115G4 (Intel Core i3-1115G4 - 2 Core, up to 4.1 GHz)

Will ESXi run on the ASRock Industrial NUC 1100 Series?
Yes. It is possible to install ESXi. Due to missing i219V and i225LM drivers in the original image, it is required to create a custom Image using a community-created driver. Instructions on how to create the Image are included in this article. This problem is not specific to ASRock's 11th Gen. The custom image is also required for Intel's 11th Gen NUC and some older models.

Read More »ESXi on ASRock Industrial NUC 1100 Series (11th Gen Intel "Tiger Lake" CPU)

VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 2 on Intel NUC

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0 Update 2 has been released this week and before you start to deploy it to production, you want to evaluate it in your testing environment or homelab. If you have Intel NUCs 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.

Within the 7.0 releases, there are many issues with consumer network adapters, like the deprecation of VMKlinux drivers and thus the missing support for Realtek NICs, and the up and downs with the ne1000 driver.

To be on the safe side, I'm doing a quick checkup on which NUCs are safe to update and what considerations you have to take before installing the update. Also, I'm quickly explaining the options to workaround the crypto64.efi issue.

Read More »VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 2 on Intel NUC