virtupædia

One of the minor annoyances of using unsupported hardware is that you get unexpected behaviour. The Intel NUC will not report some required hardware states that ESXi needs. These include things such as the make, model, serial, and asset numbers. In order to work around this we need to build a custom BIOS to populate missing values. Thanks to Virten.net   for the know how to do this. There is one caveat, the NUC does not appear in the "download and customize selection" any more. download the BIOS file from Intel Open the file Add in the missing details—I've created a BIOS file for each node with proper details for each, but that isn't really required. Save the BIOS file(s) To easily create a bootable USB use Rufus Rufus version: 2.5.799 Windows version: Windows 10 64-bit (Build 10240) Syslinux versions: 4.07/2013-07-25, 6.03/2014-10-06 Grub versions: 0.4.6a, 2.02~beta2 Locale ID: 0x0409 0 devices found Checking for Rufus updates... Checking

Below I'll provide the first node as an example of the ridiculously simple hardware install. The unboxing: Removing the case: Installation of the 500 GB M.2 Drive: Remove the mounting screw from the chassis: Place the drive into the slot: Fix the screw in place: 1 TB SSD: Slot it into the drive bay: The correct way! ;-) Repeat two more times, cable and go:

In the coming days and weeks, I'll be documenting the construction of a very powerful nested cluster of ESXi hosts. These are based on the Intel NUC platform, and I will be linking to much of the source material used in constructing this lab. The hardware used is as follows: 3×Intel NUC 5i7RYH  3× Samsung 1TB 850 EVO Series SATA  SSD 3×SSD 850 EVO M.2 500GB 6×16GB SO-DIMM Intelligent Memory  The three ESXi nodes are running  6.0.0 (Build 2809209) customised with the E1000E driver, and have the ESXi UI Fling Installed. The first node of the cluster has been running for several weeks, running a nested ESX environment with all flash virtual SAN So, if you are interested, stay tuned here, and I will be documenting the steps I've already taken, Giving much credit to those other bloggers out there that have done a lot of the heavy lifting.  I'll be extending this deployment with all of the following: AD Services design for vSphere Environmen