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homelab

VMworld Hackathon Hardware/Software BOM

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I know many of you have been asking about the hardware setup that we had used in this years VMworld Hackathon. I finally got a chance to document the details and you can find the complete hardware and software BOM below. For VMworld US, we had two different HW configurations, one for the primary Hackathon which was also re-used for VMworld Europe but we also had another configuration for the Hackathon Training sessions which was new this year. For VMworld Europe, we re-used the primary Hackathon hardware, but we also had the opportunity to take advantage of the new VMware Cloud on AWS offering and built a similiar configuration that teams could also remotely connect to as well. The only difference between the on-premises hardware and VMWonAWS, is the latter required users to RDP to a Windows jump host. Both options were provided and teams could select either environment to use.

Note: Internally, CDW is one of our vendors for purchasing hardware/software and that is why there are links directly to their site. However, you may find better pricing by looking online, especially Amazon which majority of the components are cheaper except for the server which you can get an exclusive vGhetto Discount at MITXPC. I have added links to both CDW/Amazon where applicable and I recommend doing research to find the best pricing if you are on a budget.

Here is a picture of the setup at VMworld US:


Here is a picture of the setup at VMworld EU:

[Read more...] about VMworld Hackathon Hardware/Software BOM

Exclusive vGhetto discount on homelab hardware from MITXPC

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On a regular basis I already receive a number of inquires from both internal VMware folks as well as external partners and customers about VMware homelabs and the type of hardware that can be used. After demo'ing our recent USB to SDDC project, the requests have literally tripled! Most folks are generally inquiring BOM details and/or where to purchase the Intel NUC or the SuperMicro E200-8D.

In particular, the SuperMicro E200-8D has probably received the most amount of interest lately. In fact, I am also interested in one after having an opportunity to play with one during the Melbourne VMUG. One thing I had noticed while talking to several colleagues who have purchased this system both locally within the Bay Area as well as overseas such as Australia was that one particular reseller kept coming up over and over again. That vendor was MITXPC which is a local bay area company located over in Fremont which specializes in Mini-ITX systems.

The reason MITXPC was being used by the majority of these folks was simple, they had the best price for the SuperMicro E200-8D which was significantly cheaper than other vendors including Amazon.

Vendor Price
E200-8D on MITXPC $799 USD ($783.02 w/discount code)
E200-8D on Amazon $849 USD

Having heard good things about MITXPC, I decided to reach out to them and see if there was anything special they could do for the VMware Community. I was able to get a special discount code that would offer folks an additional 2% off their entire purchase at MITXPC. For those of you who have been holding off on a refresh your home lab or itching to build your own, this is a great time! If you would like to take advantage of this offer, simply use the discount code VIRTUALLYGHETTO2OFF when you check out. I would like to give a huge thanks to Eric Yui of MITXPC for working with me on this and helping out the VMware Community.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with MITXPC.

vGhetto Automated vSphere Lab Deployment for vSphere 6.0u2 & vSphere 6.5

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For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you may have seen a few tweets from me hinting at a vSphere deployment script that I have been working on. This was something I had initially built for my own lab use but I figured it probably could benefit the larger VMware community, especially around testing and evaluational purposes. Today, I am please to announce the release of my vGhetto vSphere Lab Deployment (VVLD) scripts which leverages the new PowerCLI 6.5 release which is partly why I needed to wait until it was available before publishing.

There are literally hundreds if not more ways to build and configure a vSphere lab environment. Over the years, I have noticed that some of these methods can be quite complex simply due to their requirements, or incomplete as they only handle specific portion of the deployment or add additional constraints and complexity because they are composed of several other tools and scripts which can make it hard to manage. One of my primary goals for the project was to be able to stand up a fully functional vSphere environment, not just deploying a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) or a couple of Nested ESXi VMs, but rather the entire vSphere stack and have it fully configured and ready for use. I also wanted to develop the scripts using a single scripting language that was not only easy to use, so that others could enhance or extend it further but also with the broadest support into the various vSphere APIs. Lastly, as a stretch goal, I would love to be able to run this script across the different OS platforms.

With these goals in mind, I decided to build these scripts using the latest PowerCLI 6.5 release. Not only is PowerCLI super easy to use, but I was able to immediately benefit from some of the new functionality that was added in the latest PowerCLI release such as the native VSAN cmdlets which I could use a sub-set of the cmdlets against prior releases of vSphere like 6.0 Update 2 for example. Although, not all functionality in PowerCLI has been ported over to PowerCLICore, you can see where VMware is going with it and my hope is that in the very near future, what I have created can one day be executed across all OS platforms whether that is Windows, Linux or Mac OS X and potentially even ARM-based platforms 🙂

Changelog:

  • 11/22/16
    • Automatically handle Nested ESXi on vSAN
  • 01/20/17
    • Resolved "Another task in progress" thanks to Jason M
  • 02/12/17
    • Support for deploying to VC Target
    • Support for enabling SSH on VCSA
    • Added option to auto-create vApp Container for VMs
    • Added pre-check for required files
  • 02/17/17
    • Added missing dvFilter param to eth1 (missing in Nested ESXi OVA)
  • 02/21/17 (All new features added only to the vSphere 6.5 Std deployment)
    • Support for deploying NSX 6.3 & registering with vCenter Server
    • Support for updating Nested ESXi VM to ESXi 6.5a (required for NSX 6.3)
    • Support for VDS + VXLAN VMkernel configuration (required for NSX 6.3)
    • Support for "Private" Portgroup on eth1 for Nested ESXi VM used for VXLAN traffic (required for NSX 6.3)
    • Support for both Virtual & Distributed Portgroup on $VMNetwork
    • Support for adding ESXi hosts into VC using DNS name (disabled by default)
    • Added CPU/MEM/Storage resource requirements in confirmation screen
  • 04/18/18
    • New version of the script vsphere-6.7-vghetto-standard-lab-deployment.ps1 to support vSphere 6.7
    • Added support for vCenter Server 6.7, some of the JSON params have changed for consistency purposes which needed to be updated
    • Added support for new Nested ESXi 6.7 Virtual Appliance (will need to download that first)
    • vMotion is now enabled by default on vmk0 for all Nested ESXi hosts
    • Added new $enableVervoseLoggingToNewShell option which spawns new PowerShell session to provide more console output during VCSA deploy. FR by Christian Mohn
    • Removed dvFilter code, since thats now part of the Nested ESXi VA

Requirements:

  • 1 x Physical ESXi host OR vCenter Server running at least ESXi 6.0 Update 2 or greater
  • PowerCLI 6.5 R1 installed on a Window system
  • Nested ESXi 6.0 or 6.5 Virtual Appliance OVA
  • vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.0 or 6.5 extracted ISO
  • NSX 6.3 OVA (optional)
    • ESXi 6.5a offline patch bundle

Supported Deployments:

The scripts support deploying both a vSphere 6.0 Update 2 as well as vSphere 6.5 environment and there are two types of deployments for each:

  • Standard - All VMs are deployed directly to the physical ESXi host
  • Self Managed - Only the Nested ESXi VMs are deployed to physical ESXi host. The VCSA is then bootstrapped onto the first Nested ESXi VM

Below is a quick diagram to help illustrate the two deployment scenarios. The pESXi in gray is what you already have deployed which must be running at least ESXi 6.0 Update 2. The rest of the boxes is what the scripts will deploy. In the "Standard" deployment, three Nested ESXi VMs will be deployed to the pESXi host and configured with vSAN. The VCSA will also be deployed directly to the pESXi host and the vCenter Server will be configured to add the three Nested ESXi VMs into its inventory. This is a pretty straight forward and basic deployment, it should not surprise anyone. The "Self Managed" deployment is simliar, however the biggest difference is that rather than the VCSA being deployed directly to the pESXi host like the "Standard" deployment, it will actually be running within the Nested ESXi VM. The way that this deployment scenario works is that we will still deploy three Nested ESXi VM onto the pESXi host, however, the first Nested ESXi VM will be selected as a "Bootstrap" node which we will then construct a single-node vSAN to then deploy the VCSA. Once the vCenter Server is setup, we will then add the remainder Nested ESXi VMs into its inventory.

vsphere-6-5-vghetto-lab-deployment-0
For most users, I expect the "Standard" deployment to be more commonly used but for other advanced workflows such as evaluating the new vCenter Server High Availability feature in vSphere 6.5, you may want to use the "Self Managed" deployment option. Obviously, if you select the latter deployment, the provisioning will take longer as you are now "double nested" and depending on your underlying physical resources, this can take quite a bit more time to deploy as well as consume more physical resources as your Nested ESXi VMs must now be larger to accommodate the VCSA. In both scenarios, there is no reliance on additional shared storage, they will both create a three node vSAN Cluster which of course you can expand by simply editing the script.

Deployment Time:

Here is a table breaking down the deployment time for each scenario and vSphere version:

Deployment Type Duration
vSphere 6.5 Standard 36 min
vSphere 6.0 Standard 26 min
vSphere 6.5 Self Managed 47 min
vSphere 6.0 Self Managed 34 min

Obviously, your miles will vary based on your hardware configuration and the size of your deployment.

Scripts:

There are four different scripts which covers the scenarios we discussed above:

Instructions:

Please refer to the Github project here for detailed instructions.

Verification:

Once you have saved all your changes, you can then run the script. You will be provided with a summary of what will be deployed and you can verify that everything is correct before attempting the deployment. Below is a screenshot on what this would look like:

Sample Execution:

Here is an example of running a vSphere 6.5 "Standard" deployment:


Here is an example of running a vSphere 6.5 "Self Managed" deployment:

vsphere-6-5-vghetto-lab-deployment-2
If everything is succesful, you can now login to your new vCenter Server and you should either see the following for a "Standard" deployment:

vsphere-6-5-vghetto-lab-deployment-5
or the following for "Self Managed" deployment:

vsphere-6-5-vghetto-lab-deployment-6
I hope you find these scripts as useful as I do and feel free to enhance these scripts to perform additional functionality or extend them to cover other VMware product deployments such as NSX or vRealize products for example. Enjoy!

Functional USB 3.0 Ethernet Adapter (NIC) driver for ESXi 5.5 & 6.0

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Earlier this month I wrote an article demonstrating a functional USB ethernet adapter for ESXi 5.1. This was made possible by using a custom built driver for ESXi that was created over three years ago by a user named Trickstarter. After having re-discovered the thread several years later, I had tried reaching out to the user but concluded that he/she has probably moved on given the lack of forum activity in the recent years. Over the last few weeks I have been investigating to see if it was possible to compile a new version of the driver that would function with newer versions of ESXi such as our 5.5 and 6.0 release.

UPDATE (01/22/17) - For details on using a USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 Ethernet Adapter, please see this post here.

UPDATE (11/17/16) - New driver has been updated for ESXi 6.5, please find the details here.

After reaching out to a few folks internally, I was introduced to Songtao Zheng, a VMware Engineer who works on some of our USB code base. Songtao was kind enough to provide some of assistance in his spare time to help with this non-sanction effort that I was embarking on. Today, I am please to announce that we now have a functional USB ethernet adapter driver based on the ASIX AX88179 that works for both ESXi 5.5 and 6.0. This effort could not have been possible without Songtao and I just want to say thank you very much for all of your help and contributions. I think it is safe to say that the overall VMware community also thanks you for your efforts. This new capability will definitely enable new use cases for vSphere home labs that were never possible before when using platforms such as the Intel NUC or Apple Mac Mini for example. Thank you Songtao! I would also like to extend an additional thank you to Jose Gomes, one of my readers, who has also been extremely helpful with his feedback as well as assistance on testing the new drivers.

Now, Before jumping into the goods, I do want to mention there are a few caveats to be aware of and that I think it is important to understand them before making any purchasing decisions.

  • First and foremost, this is NOT officially supported by VMware, use at your own risk.
  • Secondly, we have observed there is a substantial difference in transfer speeds between Transmit (Egress) and Receive (Ingress) traffic which may or may not be acceptable depending on your workload. On Receive, the USB network adapter is performing close to a native gigabit interface. However, on Transmit, the bandwidth mysteriously drops by ~50% which includes very inconsistent transfer speeds. We are not exactly sure why this is the case, but given ESXi does not officially support USB based ethernet adapters, it is possible that the underlying infrastructure was never optimized for such devices. YMMV
  • Lastly, for the USB ethernet adapter to properly function, you will need a system that supports USB 3.0 which kind of makes sense for this type of a solution to be beneficial in the home lab. If you have a system with USB 2.0, the device will probably not work at least from testing that we have done.

Note: For those interested in the required source code changes to build the AX88179 driver, I have published all of the details on my Github repo here.

Disclaimer: In case you some how missed it, this is not officially supported by VMware. Use at your own risk.

Without further ado, here are the USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapters that are supported with the two drivers:

Note: There may be other USB ethernet adapters that uses the same chipset which could also leverage this driver but these are the only two that have been verified.

usbnic
Here are the ESXi driver VIB downloads:

Note: Although the drivers were compiled against a specific version of ESXi, they should also work on the same major version of ESXi, but I have not done that level of testing and YMMV.

Verify USB 3.0 Support

As mentioned earlier, you will need a system that is USB 3.0 capable to be able to use the USB ethernet adapter. If you are unsure, you can plug in a USB 3.0 device and run the following command to check:

lsusb

usb3nic-0
What you will be looking for is an entry stating "Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub" which shows that ESXi was able to detect a USB 3.0 port on your system. Secondly, look for the USB device you just plugged in and ensure the "Bus" ID matches that of the USB 3.0 bus. This will tell you if your device is being claimed as a USB 3.0 device. If not, you may need to update your BIOS as some systems may have USB 2.0 enabled by default like earlier versions of Intel NUC as desribed here. You may also be running pre-ESXi 5.5 which did not support USB 3.0 as mentioned here, so you may need to upgrade your ESXi host to at least 5.5 or greater.

Install Driver

You can either install the VIB directly onto your ESXi host or by creating a custom ESXi ISO that includes the driver using a popular tool like ESXi Customizer by Andreas Peetz.

To install the VIB, upload the VIB to your ESXi host and then run the following ESXCLI command specifying the full path to the VIB:

esxcli software vib install -v /vghetto-ax88179-esxi60u2.vib -f

usb3nic-1
To verify that the USB network adapter has been successfully claimed, run either of the following commands to list your physical NICs:

esxcli network nic list
esxcfg-nics -l

usb3nic-2
To add the USB uplink, you will need to either use the vSphere Web Client or ESXCLI to add the uplink to either a Virtual or Distributed Virtual Switch.

usb3nic-3
To do so using ESXCLI, run the following command and specify the name of your vSwitch:

esxcli network vswitch standard uplink add -u vusb0 -v vSwitch0

Uninstall Driver

To uninstall the VIB, first make sure to completely unplug the USB network adapter from the ESXi first. Next, run the following ESXCLI command which will automatically unload the driver and remove the VIB from your ESXi host:

esxcli software vib remove -n vghetto-ax88179-esxi60u2

Note: If you try to remove the VIB while the USB network adapter is still plugged in, you may hang the system or cause a PSOD. Simply reboot the system if you accidentally get into this situation.

Troubleshooting

If you are not receiving link on the USB ethernet adapter, it is most likely that your system does not support USB 3.0. If you find the a similar message like the one below in /var/log/vmkernel.log then you are probably running USB 1.0 or 2.0.

2016-03-21T23:30:49.195Z cpu6:33307)WARNING: LinDMA: Linux_DMACheckConstraints:138: Cannot map machine address = 0x10f5b6b44, length = 2 for device 0000:00:1d.7; reason = address exceeds dma_mask (0xffffffff))

Summary

For platforms that have limited built-in networking capabilities such as the Intel NUC and Apple Mac Mini, customers now have the ability to add additional network interfaces to these systems. This will now open up a whole new class of use cases for vSphere based home labs that were never possible before, especially with solutions such as VSAN and NSX. I look forward to seeing what our customers can now do with these new networking capabilities.

Additional Info

Here are some additional screenshots testing the dual USB 3.0 ethernet adapter as well as a basic iPerf benchmark for the single USB ethernet adapter. I was not really impressed with the speeds for the dual ethernet adapter which I had shared some more info here. Unless you are limited on number of USB 3.0 ports, I would probably recommend just sticking with the single port ethernet adapter.

usb3nic-5
usb3nic-6

iPerf benchmark for Ingress traffic (single port USB ethernet adapter):
usb3nic-7
iPerf benchmark for Egress traffic (single port USB ethernet adapter):
usb3nic-8

Adding custom VSAN BIOS splash screen to the Intel NUC

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One of the last things I wanted to look into after setting up my new VSAN 6.2 home lab on the new 6th Gen Intel NUC was to add a custom BIOS splash screen giving my system a personal touch. Updating the BIOS splash screen would require flashing the BIOS itself which gave me some concerns after hearing about the BIOS v33 issue in which the M.2 slot would no longer be detected after the update. Although there was a simple workaround after the update, I still wanted to be cautious. Over the weekend I had noticed that Intel had released BIOS v36 for the Intel NUC which resolved the M.2 issue among a few others. I decided to give it a shot and hope that I that I do not brick my NUC.

I am happy to say that I was successful in updating to the latest Intel NUC BIOS and as you can see from the screenshot below, I was also able to replace the default Intel BIOS splash screen with a Captain VSAN BIOS splash screen (TV is 46" for those wondering) 🙂

custom-vsan-bios-splash-screen-for-intel-nuc-0
The process for building and customizing your Intel NUC BIOS is relatively straight forward but because I waited until after I had everything installed, it ended up being a bit more work than I had hoped. To customize your BIOS, Intel provides a Microsoft Windows only utility called Intel Integrator Toolkit. The easiest way to build and update your BIOS is to initially start off by installing Microsoft Windows on the Intel NUC itself which then allows you to easily flash the BIOS using the executable that is generated from the toolkit. Since I had already consumed both of my SSDs for VMware VSAN and Microsoft Windows does not allow you to install its OS directly onto a USB device, I had to use this method here to install a bootable version of Microsoft Windows onto the USB device since I did not want to blow away my VSAN setup.

OK, so now onto the cool stuff. Below are the instructions on how to build and customize your BIOS for the Intel NUC. If you would like to use the exact same BIOS splash screen as well as update to the latest BIOS v36 and do not want to go through the hassle, I have made my custom VSAN BIOS image available here. You just need to download the executable and run it on the Intel NUC itself which must be running Microsoft Windows (I used 8.1) and then follow the screens on flashing your BIOS.

Step 1 - Download the following two packages and transfer them to Microsoft Windows image running on your NUC:

Step 2 - Install the Intel Integrator Toolkit and then start the program

Step 3 - Select the "Customize a BIOS file" option and load either the custom VSAN BIOS image which I have made available here OR load the NUC BIOS v36 file you had downloaded earlier.

custom-vsan-bios-splash-screen-for-intel-nuc-1
Step 4 - In the lower left hand corner, browse for the graphic image that you wish to use for your BIOS splash screen (images with black background works the best). For those interested, you can find the Captain VSAN image that I had used here. The tool actually supports several image formats in addition to the default BMP such as JPEG and PNG, you just need to change the extension type. There is a size limitation, but the nice thing about the tool is that there is an option to compress the image when it detects it is too large. Make sure to change the image for the four different options by clicking on the drop down wizard. I thought I only had to replace the first image but it looks like other versions of the splash screen is also used and it is best to just replace them all. You also have the option of changing other default settings in the BIOS, feel free to click on the tooltip for details on each of the options.

custom-vsan-bios-splash-screen-for-intel-nuc-2
Step 5 - Once you are done customizing your BIOS, you will then save your changes and the tool will produce a single Windows executable (SY0036.exe) which you will run on the NUC itself to flash the BIOS. You will be prompted with a couple of questions and once the process begins, it will restart and you will need to confirm one more time before the imaging process starts. If everything was successful, you should now see a new BIOS splash screen replacing the default Intel image. There is a good chance you may go through this process a few times depending if you are happy with the splash screen display. I think it took me about three tries. Hope this helps anyone looking to add that personal touch to their home lab!

VSAN 6.2 (vSphere 6.0 Update 2) homelab on 6th Gen Intel NUC

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As many of you know, I have been happily using an Apple Mac Mini for my personal vSphere home lab for the past few years now. I absolutely love the simplicity and the versatility of the platform to easily run a basic vSphere lab to being able to consume advanced capabilities of the vSphere platform like VMware VSAN or NSX for example. The Mac Mini's also supports more complex networking configurations by allowing you to add an additional network adapter which leverages the built-in Thunderbolt adapter which many other similar form factors lack. Having said that all that, one major limitation with the Mac Mini platform has always been the limited amount of memory it can support which is a maximum of 16GB (same limitation as other form factors in this space). Although it is definitely possible to run a vSphere lab with only 16GB of memory, it does limit you some what on what you can deploy which is challenging if you want to explore other solutions like VSAN, NSX and vRealize.

I was really hoping that Apple would have released an update to their Mac Mini platform last year that would include support for 32GB of memory, but instead it was a very minor update and was mostly a let down which you can read more about here. Earlier this year, I found out from fellow blogger Florian Grehl that Intel has just released their 6th generation of the Intel NUC which officially adds support for 32GB of memory. I have been keeping an eye on the Intel NUC for some time now but due to the same memory limitation as the Mac Mini, I had never considered it as viable option, especially given that I own a Mac Mini already. With the added support for 32GB of memory and the ability to house two disk drives (M.2 and 2.5"), this was the update I was finally waiting for to pull the trigger and refresh my home lab given 16GB was just not cutting it for the work I was doing anymore.

There have been quite a bit of interest in what I ended up purchasing for running VSAN 6.2 (vSphere 6.0 Update 2) which has not GA'ed ... yet and so I figure I would together a post with all the details in case others were looking to build a similar lab. This article is broken down into the following sections:

  • Bill of Materials (BOM)
  • Installation
  • VSAN Configuration
  • Final Word

Disclaimer: The Intel NUC is not on VMware's official Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) and there for is not officially supported by VMware. Please use this platform at your own risk.

Bill of Materials (BOM)

vsan62-intel-nuc-bom
Below are the components with links that I used for my configuration which is partially based on budget as well as recommendations from others who have a similar setup. If you think you will need more CPU horsepower, you can look at the Core i5 (NUC6i5SYH) model which is slightly more expensive than the i3. I opted for an all-flash configuration because I not only wanted the performance but I also wanted to take advantage of the much anticipated Deduplication and Compression feature in VSAN 6.2 which is only supported with an all-flash VSAN setup. I also did not have a need for large amount of storage capacity, but you could also pay a tiny bit more for the exact same drive giving you a full 1TB if needed. If you do not care for an all-flash setup, you can definitely look at spinning rust which can give you several TB's of storage at a very reasonable cost. The overall cost of the system for me was ~$700 USD (before taxes) and that was because some of the components were slightly discounted through the use of a preferred retailer that my employer provided. I would highly recommend you check with your employer to see if you have similiar HR benefits as that can help with the cost if that is important to you. The SSDs actually ended up being cheaper on Amazon and so I ended up purchasing them there. 

Installation

vsan62-intel-nuc-1
The installation of the memory and the SSDs on NUC was super simple. You just need a regular phillips screwdriver and there were four screws at the bottom of the NUC that you will need to unscrew. Once loosen, you just need to flip the NUC unit back on top while holding the bottom and slowly taking the top off. The M.2 SSD requires a smaller phillips screwdriver which you will need to unscrew before you can plug in the device. The memory just plugs right in and you should hear a click to confirm its inserted all the way. The 2.5" SSD just plugs into the drive bay which is attached to the top of the NUC casing. If you are interested in more details, you can find various unboxing and installation videos online like this one. 

UPDATE (05/25/16): Intel has just released BIOS v44 which fully enables unleashes the power of your NVMe devices. One thing to note from the article is that you do NOT need to unplug the security device, you can just update BIOS by simply download the BIOS file and loading it onto a USB key (FAT32).

UPDATE (03/06/16): Intel has just released BIOS v36 which resolves the M.2 SSD issue. If you have updated using earlier versions, to resolve the problem you just need to go into the BIOS and re-enable the M.2 device as mentioned in this blog here.

One very important thing to note which I was warned about by a fellow user was NOT to update/flash to a newer version of the BIOS. It turns out that if you do, the M.2 SSD will fail to be detected by the system which sounds like a serious bug if you ask me. The stock BIOS version that came with my Intel NUC is SYSKLi35.86A.0024.2015.1027.2142 in case anyone is interested. I am not sure if you can flash back the original version but another user just informed me that they had accidentally updated the BIOS and now he can no longer see the M.2 device 🙁

For the ESXi installation, I just used a regular USB key that I had lying around and used the unetbootin tool to create a bootable USB key. I am using the upcoming ESXi 6.0 Update 2 (which has not been released ... yet) and you will be able to use the out of the box ISO that is shipped from VMware. There are no additional custom drivers that are required. Once the ESXi installation loads up, you can then install ESXi back onto the same ESXi USB key which it initially boot it up. I know this is not always common knowledge and as some may think you need an additional USB device to install ESXi. Ensure you do not install anything on the two SSDs if you plan to use VSAN as it requires at least (2 x SSD) or (1 x SSD and 1 x MD).

vsan62-intel-nuc-3
If you are interested in adding a bit of personalization to your Intel NUC setup and replace the default Intel BIOS splash screen like I have, take a look at this article here for more details.

custom-vsan-bios-splash-screen-for-intel-nuc-0
If you are interested in adding additional network adapters to your Intel NUC via USB Ethernet Adapter, have a look at this article here.

VSAN Configuration

Bootstrapping VSAN Datastore:

  • If you plan to run VSAN on the NUC and you do not have additional external storage to deploy and setup things like vCenter Server, you have the option to "bootstrap" VSAN using a single ESXi node to start with which I have written in more detail here and here. This option allows you to setup VSAN so that you can deploy vCenter Server and then help you configure the remainder nodes of your VSAN cluster which will require at least 3 nodes unless you plan on doing a 2-Node VSAN Cluster with the VSAN Witness Appliance. For more detailed instructions on bootstrapping an all-flash VSAN datastore, please take a look at my blog article here.
  • If you plan to *ONLY* run a single VSAN Node which is possible but NOT recommended given you need a minimum of 3 nodes for VSAN to properly function. After the vCenter Server is deployed, you will need to update the default VSAN VM Storage Policy to ether allow "Forced Provisioning" or changing the FTT from 1 to 0 (e.g. no protection given you only have a single node). This will be required else you will run into provisioning issues as VSAN will prevent you from deploying VMs as it is expecting two additional VSAN nodes. When logged into the home page of the vSphere Web Client, click on "VM Storage Policies" icon and edit the "Virtual SAN Default Storage Policy" and change the following values as show in the screenshot below:

Screen Shot 2016-03-03 at 6.08.16 AM

Installing vCenter Server:

  • If you are new to deploying the vCenter Server, VMware has a deployment guide which you can follow here.

Optimizations:

  • In addition, because this is for a home lab, my buddy Cormac Hogan has a great tip on disabling device monitoring as the SSD devices may not be on the VMware's official HCL and can potentially negatively impact your lab environment. The following ESXCLI command needs to be run once on each of the ESXi hosts in the ESXi Shell or remotely:

esxcli system settings advanced set -o /LSOM/VSANDeviceMonitoring -i 0

  • I also recently learned from reading Cormac's blog that there is also new ESXi Advanced Setting in VSAN 6.2 which allows VSAN to provision a VM swap object as "thin" versus "thick" which has been the historically default. To disable the use of "thick" provisioning, you will need to run the following ESXCLI command on each ESXi host:

esxcli system settings advanced set -o /VSAN/SwapThickProvisionDisabled -i 1

  • Lastly, if you plan to run Nested ESXi VMs on top of your physical VSAN Cluster, be sure to add this configuration change outlined in this article here, else you may see some strangeness when trying to create VMFS volumes.

vsan62-intel-nuc-2

Final Word

I have only had the NUC for a couple of days but so far I have been pretty impressed with the ease of setup and the super tiny form factor. I thought the Mac Mini's were small and portable, but the NUC really blows it out of the water. I was super happy with the decision to go with an all-flash setup, the deployment of the VCSA was super fast as you would expect. If I compare this to my Mac Mini which had spinning rust, for a portion of the VCSA deployment, the fan would go a bit psycho and you can feel the heat if you put your face close to it. I could barely feel any heat from the NUC and it was dead silent which is great as it sits in our living room. Like the Mac Mini, the NUC has regular HDMI port which is great as I can connect it directly to our TV and has plenty of USB ports which could come in handy if you wanted to play with VSAN using USB-based disks 😉

vsan62-intel-nuc-4
One neat idea that Duncan Epping had brought up in a recent chat with him was to run a 2-Node VSAN Cluster and have the VSAN Witness appliance running on a desktop or laptop. This would make for a very simple and affordable VSAN home lab without requiring a 3rd physical ESXi node. I had also thought about doing the same but instead of 2 NUCs, I would be combining my Mac Mini and NUC to form the 2-Node VSAN Cluster and then run the VSAN Witness on my iMac desktop which has 16GB of memory. This is just another slick way you can leverage this new and powerful platform to run a full blow VSAN setup. For those of you following my blog, I am also looking to see if there is a way to add a secondary network adapter to the NUC by the way of a USB 3.0 based ethernet adapter. I have already shown that it is definitely possible with older releases of ESXi and if this works, could make the NUC even more viable.

Lastly, for those looking for a more beefier setup, there are rumors that Intel maybe close to releasing another update to the Intel NUC platform code named "Skull Canyon" which could include a Quad-Core i7 (Broadwell based) along with supporting the new USB-c interface which would be able to run Thunderbolt 3. If true, this could be another option for those looking for a bit more power for their home lab.

A few folks had been asking what I plan to do with my Mac Mini now that I have my NUC. I probably will be selling it, it is still a great platform and has Core i7 which definitely helps with any CPU intensive tasks. It also supports two drives, so it is quite inexpensive to purchase another SSD as it already comes with one to setup an all-flash VSAN 6.2 setup. Below are the the specs and If you interested in the setup, feel free to drop me an email at info.virtuallyghetto [at] gmail [dot] com.

  • Mac Mini 5,3 (Late 2011)
  • Quad-Core i7 (262635QM)
  • 16GB memory
  • 1 x SSD (120GB) Corsair Force GT
  • 1 x MD (750 GB) Seagate Momentus XT
  • 1 x built-in 1Gbe Ethernet port
  • 1 x Thunderbolt port
  • 4 x USB ports
  • 1 x HDMI
  • Original packaging available
  • VSAN capable
  • ESXi will install OOTB w/o any issues

Additional Useful Resources: