Hi folks!
Welcome back again! While attending VMware Explore this year, as an vExpert we got a Intel Processor Based System
![](https://jadijkstra.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/nuc.png)
How cool is it to do something great with this?
I have 2 goals;
First goal is to install ESXi on it and have an Horizon 8 Environment running on top of it
Second goal is to do more with Dockers, (Tanzu), more about that later!
But first thing is to add some storage and memory, because….
![](https://jadijkstra.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/nuc-inside.png)
Without it, it will do not that much 🙂
So let’s get started!
As I did not read the product description very well, this machine does not support NVME drives, and what did I bought.. yes a Samsung M2 1TB NVME. So after trying to get it working, it isn’t… in the BIOS however there are NVME settings, but it just does not work. After that I ordered a WD Blue M2 Sata 1TB drive and that works well!
I also ordered 2x 16GB of Memory (total of 32GB), and that works also great. It seems that 2x 32GB is also support, but due to the performance/processor I think 64GB is al little bit overkill in what I want to do/run on this machine. So for me 32GB is more than enough.
ESXi
Okay, from this point I like (of course) to as a VMware Enthusiast to run ESXi to add this to my LAB environment. But unfortunately, the Network Controller is not supported by VMware. Also not in a custom ESXi image with additional drivers. A solution for that is to use 1 or 2 external USB to Network Controllers https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BBD7NFU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
For me at this point, I really like to have the onboard NIC’s working, but that is just not possible.
So what to do next? Use it as a keep-warm-coffee-mug-plate? Well no of course not! It’s just an awesome NUC which I want to use. But at this point I am not going to install ESXi Instead I am going to give a try for PROXMOX!
Proxmox
Ever heard of Proxmox? I did from some people, forum’s etc, but never used it before. So I thought, well let’s give it a chance! It’s still for me a LAB Machine, so let’s try to install!
Installation is pretty straightforward, except I also have issues with Proxmox with this Machine! The problems I encounter are:
- Networking is not starting after boot and I have not fixed this yet, there are a lot of articles with this same problem, I did not manage to fix it though (but I will 🙂 )
If I log into the console and do a restart of the networking it works, but it just doesn’t after a reboot.
- Reboot is also a (huge) problem of this machine, when initiating a reboot the system just hangs forever. This has to do with the Intel Elkhart Chipset and is a known problem for Proxmox.
So I have 2 (huge) challenges to get the machine working as I want to.
As I wanted to go with adding VMware Horizon to the machine and AppVolumes, without ESXi that won’t work I guess, to I skip this step and going to see what we can do with containers (Docker) to learn more about this stuff!
I think in a later stage (perhaps this year) I will eventually install ESXi on it as that is my primary goal for this machine 🙂
Stay tuned!