mac pro

Using vSphere Auto Deploy to Netboot ESXi onto Apple Mac Hardware

01/17/2017 by William Lam 2 Comments

Last week I published an article that demonstrated for the first time on how to netboot an ESXi installation onto Apple Mac Hardware. As you can imagine, this was very exciting news for our VMware/Apple customers, who historically have not had this capability before. Customers can now automate and install ESXi over the network onto their Apple Mac Hardware just like you would for other non-Apple hardware.

With the ability to boot ESXi over the network for Apple Mac Hardware, it is now also possible for customers to take advantage of the vSphere Auto Deploy feature. Auto Deploy allows customers to easily and quickly provision ESXi hosts at scale and integrates directly with vCenter Server to automatically join and apply specific defined host configuration policies. This is a great time to check out Auto Deploy, especially with all the new enhancements that were introduced in vSphere 6.5 like custom script bundles for example.

Below are the instructions on how to setup Auto Deploy to work with Apple Mac Hardware.

How to Netboot install ESXi onto Apple Mac Hardware?

01/13/2017 by William Lam 11 Comments

The ability to perform an ESXi Scripted Installation over the network has been a basic capability for non-Apple hardware customers since the initial release of classic ESX. However, for customers who run ESXi on Apple Mac Hardware (first introduced in vSphere 5.0), being able to remotely boot and install ESXi over the network has not been possible and customers could only dream of this capability which many of us have probably taken for granted.

Unlike traditional scripted network installations which commonly uses Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE), Apple Mac Hardware actually uses its own developed Boot Service Discover Protocol (BSDP) which ESXi and other OSses do not support. In addition, there are very few DHCP servers that even support BSDP (at least this may have been true 4 years ago when I had initially inquired about this topic). It was expected that if you were going to Netboot (equivalent of PXE/Kickstart in the Apple world) a server that you would be running a Mac OS X system. Even if you had set this up, a Netboot installation was wildly different from a traditional PXE installation and it would be pretty difficult to near impossible to get it working with an ESXi image. With no real viable solution over the years, it was believed that a Netboot installation of ESXi onto Mac Hardware just may not be possible.

tl;dr - If you are interested in the background to the eventual solution, continue reading. If not and you just want the goods, jump down a bit further. Though, I do think it is pretty interesting and worth getting the full context 🙂

ESXi 6.5 support for Apple Mac Pro 6,1

01/09/2017 by William Lam 56 Comments

I know several of you have reached out asking about the support for ESXi 6.5 on the Apple Mac Pro 6,1 but as of right now, the Mac Pro 6,1 is currently not supported with ESXi 6.5. I know this is not ideal especially for customers who wish to take advantage of the latest vSphere release. The good news is that VMware is in the process of testing the Apple Mac Pro 6,1 for ESXi 6.5, however there is not an ETA on when this will be completed by.

Some of you might be wondering why this did not happen earlier? The primary reason is that hardware certification for ESXi is actually performed by the hardware vendors. Once a vendor completes the certification for a particular hardware platform or component, they submit the results to VMware and the VMware HCL is updated. If there is a piece of hardware that is not on the VMware HCL today, it is definitely worth reaching out to your hardware vendor to inquire about its status.

In Apple's case, it unfortunate as they do not participate in VMware's Hardware Certification program for ESXi which makes certification challenging. VMware intends to continue to support customers who require the use of Mac OS X Virtualization and will work towards getting the Mac Pro's certified for latest version of vSphere as mentioned earlier. Historically, testing and certifying ESXi for Apple hardware does take an additional amount of time and in some cases, code changes may even be required due to unexpected hardware changes from Apple.

I hope this gives customers some additional insights into how Apple hardware is certified for ESXi. If you would like to see this improved in the future, you may want to reach out to Apple and provide them with your feedback.

Now ... before you close this blog post thinking it is going to take awhile before there is going to be an update regarding ESXi 6.5 and Mac Pro 6,1, please continue reading further 🙂

UPDATE (07/28/2017) - ESXi 6.5 Update 1 just GA'ed yesterday and is fully supported with all current Apple Mac Pro 6,1 (as you can see on the HCL here) and the workaround mentioned below is no longer required. This means you can install ESXi without any modification to the image.

UPDATE (03/25/2017) - VMware has just published the following VMware KB 2149537 which outlines the officially recommended workaround to install ESXi 6.5 onto the Apple Mac Pro 6,1. The VMware HCL has also been updated to include the Apple Mac Pro 6,1 4-Core, 6-Core, 8-Core & 12-Core systems. In a future release of ESXi, the workaround will not be required and ESXi will just install out of the box. This temporarily workaround is to enable customers who wish to run the current version of ESXi 6.5 which includes GA release, 6.5a and 6.5p01.

ESXi Thunderbolt Driver to Fibre Channel Storage from ATTO

09/12/2016 by William Lam 6 Comments

One of the things I always enjoy doing at VMworld, when I am not running around and I have a few minutes to myself, is to check out the VMware Solutions Exchange. This is where you can learn and interact with hundreds of our VMware Certified Partners showcasing their new solutions and innovations that they have built on top of VMware's products.

UPDATE (08/22/17) - ATTO's ESXi Thunderbolt Driver is now officially on the VMware HCL, please see this blog post here for more details.

While walking through the show floor, I had stopped by the ATTO Technology booth who has been a long time partner of VMware in the storage and networking connectivity space. What caught my eye was that they had just released a Beta of an ESXi Thunderbolt Driver in the form of an ESXi VIB that would allow customers to connect their Apple Mac Pro 6,1 using the Thunderbolt 2 interface to an external Fibre Channel storage array. I believe ATTO might be the first vendor ever to produce a Thunderbolt Driver for ESXi. This is really exciting news if you ask me, especially as more and more of our customers are looking to virtualize Mac OS X guests in their Datacenters using vSphere.

Historically, the only option to connect a Mac Pro 6,1 to an external Fibre Channel array was to use something like a Sonnet Chassis. Now, you can potentially connect up to 6 of the built-in Thunderbolt 2 interfaces on the Mac Pro's to your external storage array using this new solution from ATTO. Before I go into some of the details, ATTO did want me to mention that this solution is currently not officially supported by VMware nor is it on VMware's HCL. ATTO will be providing full support on their software as well as VMware's software stack during the duration of the beta program. In terms of official certification on VMware's HCL, I suspect that it will most likely depend on customer demand which would influence whether ATTO applies for an official certification, which again, would be the first of its kind for Thunderbolt.

The way in which this solution works is that you install the ATTO Thunderbolt Driver on your ESXi host and this will allow it to communicate with an ATTO ThunderLink device which provides the Thunderbolt 2 to Fibre Channel connectivity. You have the option of using either the FC2082 which provides 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 (2-port) to 8Gb/s FC (2-Port) Device or the FC2182 which provides 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 (2-port) to 16Gb/s FC (2-Port) Device. Below is a diagram from the ATTO digital solution brief on Thunderbolt Driver for ESXi which outlines the configuration.

If you are interested in taking part in ATTO's ESXi Thunderbolt Driver Beta program or would like to learn more about the solution, you can reach out directly to Carllene Mowry (*protected email*) who is running the program. For more information be sure to check out the ATTO digital brief on Thunderbolt Driver for ESXi.

Lastly, I was also fortunate to have a quick chat with Carllene and team to get a few additional exclusive tidbits on some of the things the ATTO team is working on next. The first of which is support for the Thunderbolt 3 (aka USB-C) interface to Fibre Channel which will be quite nice for newer platforms that include that interface, including home lab setups such as the Intel NUC. Speaking of Intel NUC, this is just one of the many other platforms that include either Thunderbolt 2 or 3 interfaces. Although the solution today is specifically supporting the Mac Pro, I know ATTO folks are interested to hear from customers on other systems with Thunderbolt interface and providing similiar capabilities.

The other really exciting development that is currently being investigated is support for Thunderbolt 2 or 3 to 10GbE connectivity on ESXi. As you can imagine, this is really going to open up some really cool new use cases, especially around things like VSAN which can easily benefit from this. It is still in early development but from my understanding, ATTO is already seeing a lot of interest in this area as well as how this might work with VSAN. I am hoping I will be able to share more details as this further develops. If any of these updates sounds interesting, do leave a comment to let the ATTO folks know and I will make sure they monitor the thread.

Apple Mac Pro 6,1 PCIe SSD issue resolved w/ESXi 6.0 Update 2

03/15/2016 by William Lam 6 Comments

Early last year, the new Apple Mac Pro 6,1 (aka black can design) was certified and fully supported on vSphere 6.0 which I had blogged about here. Several months later, customers discovered that some of the newer Mac Pro 6,1 units were shipping with different model of their PCIe SSD device than what was originally released at GA. This was problematic because ESXi was not aware of this newer device and could not detect during or after installation. Although a work around was identified for customers looking to install either ESXi 5.x or 6.x on the newer Apple Mac Pros, it definitely was not ideal.

It has taken a bit longer than expected, but the issue has now been resolved with the latest release of ESXi 6.0 Update 2. A similar fix will be available for customers running ESXi 5.5 in a future update. You can find the direct download for ESXi 6.0 Update 2 in link below which includes a pointer to the release notes in case you are interested in other fixes included in this release.

vSphere ESXi 6.0u2 - https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=ESXI60U2&productId=491&rPId=10348

Heads up: ESXi 5.x & 6.0 unable to detect newer Apple Mac Pro 6,1 local SSD Device

07/27/2015 by William Lam 12 Comments

Over the last couple of weeks there have been several reports coming in from customers that the local SSD device found in newer Apple Mac Pro 6,1 were no longer being detected by ESXi. Starting with ESXi 5.5 Patch03 and ESXi 6.0, the Apple Mac Pro 6,1 was officially supported but it looks like the latest versions of the Mac Pro 6,1 that are being shipped contain a slightly different local SSD device which is not recognized by ESXi.

This was not the first time that this has happened, when the 2014 Mac Mini were first released, they too had a similar issue in which a custom VIB was required to get the internal device to get recognized by ESXi. There is an internal bug (PR 1487494) that is currently tracking the issue and if you are also experiencing this problem, please file an SR and have the GSS Engineer attach your case to this bug.

In the meantime, there is an unofficial workaround which was discovered by one of my readers (Mr. Spock) that by installing the community SATA-XACHI VIB over on Andreas Peetz VIB Depot site, both ESXi 5.5 and ESXi 6.0 will then recognize the local SSD Device. You will need to either use VMware Image Builder or Andreas ESXi Customizer tool to create a custom image if you decide to install ESXi directly on the local SSD device. I personally would recommend installing ESXi on USB device, this would allow you to install the VIB as a post-installation and not requiring a custom ESXi image.