Intel 8th Gen NUC, ESXi 7U2 and the Community NIC Driver

35 comments

Like many, I’ve found that the power consumption and heat generation of a decent, modern rack server is too much to reasonably handle these days, especially when space is at a premium. That’s why the 8th generation Intel NUC, specifically the ‘NUC8i5BEH’ model, fit my needs perfectly. Being small, quiet (most of the time) and power efficient mean that I barely notice a server running in the bedroom anymore. Quite the difference from the Poweredge R420 that I was running previously! I’ve gone from consuming 100 watts from the wall to just 20!

This SFF size and power usage comes at a cost though. That is to say that ESXi now no longer comes with complete support for the hardware out of the box. With 6.7U3 I was able to grab the generic ISO from VMware’s website, install it and have ESXi running without issue straight away. With the driver changes in vSphere 7, which involved the ridding of VMKLinux drivers from the OS, we now have to bundle in the community NIC drivers when we install ESXi to get the network chip working as intended. For my own NUC, the network chipset is listed in the OS as “Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (6) I219-V”. A consumer-level chip. This simple process of adding new driver packages to the ISO has been explained by many blogs before so you’ll hopefully forgive me if I skip it this time around.

As can be seen in the below screenshot, trying to install the OS results in a PSOD that I’ve never encountered before. This screen is displayed before the installer even loads.

A sight no vSphere admin ever wants to see…

Now a quick google search has forum posts suggesting that the drivers aren’t compatible, however I know this to not be the case as I’ve seen reports from other people with very similar hardware that the community NIC fling works for them without any issues. I had also made sure the ISO generated by PowerCLI was using the correct acceptance level of ‘Community’. So I dug deeper and took a jump into the local debugger. It was in here that I found a single line mentioning secure boot, unfortunately I forgot to nab a screenshot for the exact error, but in my mind having secure boot enabled but using unsigned drivers in the ESXi image could potentially cause an issue when it came to loading said drivers upon startup.

So with this new-found information in mind, I rebooted into the BIOS and disabled secure boot as can be seen below. Apologies for the phone-taken pictures, ’tis a consequence of not having any out of band management on these things!

Completely disabled secure boot

With this option now disabled, installation went through without a problem! Although in my case, it seems the old ESXi 6.7U3 install on the USB stick has become corrupted, meaning a complete reinstall for me! 🙁

Fully recognised NIC using the community driver

Hopefully this post helps someone else out there, using these great bits of engineering to run newer versions of ESXi. It’s a shame we have to jump through a couple more hoops to get it running correctly but if they’re good enough for Chick-Fil-A then they’re good enough for me. Speaking of food… 🥪

Tags

35 comments

  1. Embroidered sample print pattern
    These patterns are fully professional and embroidered samples for direct use in the production and series of embroideries and tailors.

    These patterns are designed by the standard pattern designer Ms. Akram Hosseinian Rad. They are printed on quality paper or banner and are sent to your address by post. Are of patterns.

    Reply

  18. 이봐, 내가 만난 멋진 게시물이 지난 일주일 동안 비슷한 종류의 게시물을 찾고 있었지만 거의 발견하지 못했습니다. 대단히 감사 드리며 더 많은 게시물을 찾을 것입니다. 링크모음

    Reply

  19. 나는 훌륭한 유용한 리소스를 무료로 제공하는 비용을 이해하는 웹 사이트를 보는 것을 좋아합니다. 나는 당신의 게시물을 읽는 것을 정말 좋아했습니다. 감사합니다! 토토주소

    Reply

  20. 블로그 검색에서 관련 정보를 검색하는 동안이 게시물을 찾았습니다. 좋은 게시물입니다. 계속 게시하고 정보를 업데이트하세요. 레깅스룸

    Reply

  21. 당신의 기사를 읽은 후에 나는 놀랐습니다. 나는 당신이 그것을 아주 잘 설명한다는 것을 압니다. 그리고 다른 독자들도 여러분의 기사를 읽은 후 제가 느끼는 느낌을 경험해 주셨으면합니다. 가입머니

    Reply

  23. 솔직히 말해서 스타일로 글을 쓰고 좋은 칭찬을받는 것은 꽤 어렵지만, 너무 차분하고 시원한 느낌으로 해냈고 당신은 일을 잘했습니다. 이 기사는 스타일이 돋보이며 좋은 칭찬을하고 있습니다. 베스트! 굿모닝도메인

    Reply

  28. 最安値直販店ダッチワイフ通販店 | ブランド正規品 |おとなLOVE (otona love) は正規直販店であり、自分の生産現場を持っております。第三者に通らず生産現場から直接顧客に配送するため、TPE素材や高級シリコン製のラブドールを低価格高品質で入手できます。また、正規代理WMDOLLラブドール、6YEDOLLリアルドール、JY DOLLラブドール、メーカーから直接消費者の手元に届くようなサービスを提供させていただきます。品質保証、安心・安全への取り組み。

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *