My Homelab Empire: Part 2
Setting up my vExpert gift Maxtang Intel NUC
VMWare Explore 2022 in the US and Barcelona was an amazing event for all of the attendants there, but it was an especially rewarding experience for all the vExperts that received a compact and powerful addition (much appreciated, Corey Romero and Cohesity) for their homelabs — a Maxtang Intel NUC.
As I was one of the lucky vExperts there, in the following sections of this post I will show you how I’ve upgraded my tiny homelab empire by installing an ESXi hypervisor on this NUC.
As this is the 2nd part of a series of posts, you can check out more about the hardware specs in the 1st post.
Install and update to ESXi 8.0
As we are installing enterprise software on consumer grade hardware, there are 2 problems that you will bump into that have workarounds available, which I will point out.
Step 1: I started with a clean installation of VMware-ESXi-7.0U2a-17867351-depot which I downloaded in the following way, made a bootable USB with Rufus and powered on the NUC.
1st Problem: Despite the fact that the Maxtang NUC has 2 LAN ports, it has a Realtek NIC chipset not compatible with VMware software for a while now, which is why the error below will appear in the very beginning of the installation process. Make sure you’re using a USB to LAN adapter so that you can avoid it.
Once you have your USB to LAN plugged in, the error for “No network adapters” will not appear and you should be able to follow these steps to go through the straightforward installation process. And it will all be well until the installation progress screen, which will stop at 81% and supposedly not end successfully.
2nd Problem: From here I just hit ESC a few times and it brought me back to the initial installation screen. Here I canceled the installation by hitting F11and let it reboot. Then you can find the solution for this error here. But if you want this fix to be persistent, enable SSH once the ESXi UI is reachable and then add the script explained here and in my Step 2 below. Do this while you have access to the ESXi, as on the next reboot you will have to do the same Restore Network again.
Step 2: Fix non-persistent USB NIC
To add the script, SSH into the ESXi host (I used Putty), login as root and use the following commands:
cd /etc/rc.local.d/ (to locate the correct directory)
vi local.sh (open the file where you need to edit)
Now, add the “Persisting USB NIC Bindings” config from the link before the “exit 0”…
then in a new line write:
:wq to save and quit
Step 3: Update the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi
This update is needed to get the full capability of the adapter and is not absolutely needed so that you get network connectivity for the ESXi Mactang NUC, but for more on that you can read about it here.
Note: This step can be avoided if you bundle the USB network native driver with the ISO before you install it on the Maxtang, but for that you need access to a vCenter 8 tool for customizing ISOs.
First download the ESXi702-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-47140841-component-18150468 and upload it to the ESXi datastore. Then, again SSH into the host and login as root.
After that, locate the directory where the update file was placed and use the following commands:
esxcli system maintenanceMode set -e true (sets the ESXi in maintenance mode)
esxcli software component apply -d /vmfs/volumes/638aa550–067ade42–132d-31e949ff6613/ESXi800-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-61054763-component-20826251.zip (initiates the update)
The whole ordeal should look something like this:
Step 4: Update to ESXi 8
Download the installer file (in my case VMware-VMvisor-Installer-8.0–20513097.x86_64) and make a bootable USB with Rufus. You will be greeted with the following screen
Then asked to choose to upgrade, press f11:
After that it’s pretty straight forward, just click through to do the installation.
And on the next startup, a very familiar and happy view will appear:
Navigate to your ESXi IP address to go into the UI ( I usually accept the “Join”) and take a look around the new, polished UI:
Deploy vCenter 8
Due to the fact that I’ve put 32GB into my Maxtang NUC, the next step so that I can put that much RAM to good use, was to install vCenter 8, which will require 14GB.
Previously when I used vCenter on an ESXi host in VMware Workstation the only way for it not to fail was to use a JSON script to do the deploy. That’s why I decided to use the GUI method since I’ve never gone down that road. A pretty solid explanation of both these processes are done by sysadmintutorials and although it’s for vCenter 7, procedure is the same.
Conclusion
I hope this post has been helpful in getting you started with your Maxtang Intel NUC. For more info on what’s next and what can be done once the environment is setup, check out the 3rd post of the series (coming soon).
