ESXi 8 on NUC

[kev2021]

Hi,

So it seems Intel are stopping producing there Intel NUC and Asus as well as others are going to continue to make them. From the existing Intel NUC i.e. Intel NUC 13, it seems you can install ESXi 8 on these.

I’m wondering how this is achieved as to my knowledge ESXi requires raid and wont install unless a raid card is present.

I am aware previously you could have ESXi installed on a USB stick and boot off the USB stick and then use the drives inside the device for holding your VMs but it seems VMWare are stopping this and advise it to be installed on a  drive in your device.

So I’m wondering, how do you install ESXi on a Intel NUC? Does the Intel NUC have hardware raid built in? To my knowledge it only has capacity for 2 drives and I believe the new 14 pro has 1 x NVMe, 1 x small NVMe (square chip type, 2240?) and has option to install a SSD so makes 3 drives max.

My existing Hp Microserver gen 10+ v1 is unable to run Win 11 as a OS due to no TPM2.0 support on the device and I don’t have ability to run venter due to the memory limitation.  HP Microserver has 32GB of ram but with my existing VMs, I’m basically using around  30GB of this already so device is at capacity.

I believe the Intel NUCs can have 64GB of ram so double what I currently have so exploring these as a potential to switch to a different device and I suspect these will be less power requirements than the Gen10+ I have now so could be a win win plus box is much smaller and I’ll benefit from the NVMe speed as opposed the the HDDs I have my VMs on at the moment.

I’ve seen some videos on how to install but they don’t advise if device has a raid card etc so difficult to tell.

Thanks

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

Interesting, I wonder if ESXi considers Intel NUC RAID 1 (mirror) acceptable without an inbuilt RAID card ?

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[kev2021]

Not sure tbh, last I knew esxi didn’t like software raid so needed hardware raid controller (supported by vmware ofcourse).

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

Will have to treat yourself to one for testing purpose

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[kev2021]

bit pricey for testing, given unsure if additional things required…

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

Alas beyond my knowledge (experience) with this product .

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