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You are here: Home / ESXi / ESXi on a Raspberry Pi

ESXi on a Raspberry Pi

11.07.2018 by William Lam // 46 Comments

During the closing of the VMworld Europe Keynote on Tuesday, Ray O'Farrell (CTO of VMware) had one more "tiny" surprise for our CEO, Pat Gelsinger 😉 He handed him a tiny little device called the Raspberry Pi (rPI) which was running a prototype version of ESXi! This was completely unexpected even for VMware Employees, especially as we had just announced our ESXi on ARM initiative at VMworld US. You can watch the keynote replay here starting at 1:37:15.

As you can imagine, this created a TON of excitement and buzz at the VMworld but it also sparked some interesting conversations on why VMware would even do this? Was this just a marketing gimmick or was there something more significant in showing that ESXi could run on a rPI?

Interested in @VMware #ESXi on @Arm? Want to understand the VMware Edge vision? See Alex and Regis at the Virtualization at the Edge booth, in the #IoT and Edge Zone at #VMworld2018 in Barcelona! pic.twitter.com/qGO3AO76JD

— Andrei Warkentin (@WhatAintInside) November 6, 2018

Instead of me telling you about it, why not hear it directly from some of the Engineers who are currently working on the project. On Tuesday, Chris Wolf and Daniel Beveridge had a breakout session at VMware Europe - CTO3509BE Edge: Automation, Analytics, and Real-Time Business and you watch the recording here.

UPDATE (10/09/19)- For those wondering if ESXi on ARM works on the latest rPI 4. Before you ask if this is generally available, the answer is no 🙂

BOOM! #ESXionARM running on the latest @Raspberry_Pi 4 and not just that but with actual working and all being managed by vCenter Server! Nice work to the team

🎤👊 https://t.co/qVEL5xymxJ

— William Lam (@lamw.bsky.social | @*protected email*) (@lamw) October 9, 2019

UPDATE (01/18/19) - Check out this episode of the VirtuallySpeaking Podcast where Andrei and I talk about the ESXi on ARM project at VMware

UPDATE (11/11/18) - For those on Twitter and wish to get the latest updates directly from VMware folks working on both ESXi on ARM/rPI, I have created ESXi on ARM Twitter List which you can subscribed to. In addition, there were also a ton of useful tidbits that were shared by a number of VMware folks which I thought would be useful to aggregate into a Twitter Moment which can be found here, definitely some great info and more background on the project and where we see it potentially going.

Note: Eric Sloof also did a nice video interview here with Alex who was one of the Engineers at the VMware OCTO Booth demo'ing a live setup of ESXi on rPI. They also had ESXi running on other ARM platforms like Marvell MACCHIATObin and SolidRun ClearCloud 8K Edge Gateway. If you are still at VMworld, I highly recommend you visit the OCTO booth (IoT Edge Section) to have a chat with either Alex or Regis.

There were lots of great conversations happening on Twitter regarding ESXi on rPI. One of my favorite reply was from Dominik which actually reminded me of the perfect quote "Big things have small beginnings" from the movie Prometheus.

Launch a space program and fly to the moon?

— Dominik | @*protected email* (@vDominikZ) November 7, 2018

Remember, it was not that long ago that people thought Virtualization would never take off and questioned why you would ever want to virtualize? 😀

I am actually most excited for the use cases that our customers and partners will have once they understand that they can literally re-define what a typical ESXi host can and should look like both from a form factor standpoint as well as what is possible with new compute and power constraints. If you are interested in sharing your feedback and have use cases for ESXi on ARM, feel free to leave a comment and I can connect you with the Product Manager for the ESXi on ARM initiative.

Here are just a few of the use cases that we have heard from our customers so far:

We see a number or Arm use cases with IoT gateway virtualization being a big one. The ability to add resiliency and isolation have come up in conversations with a number of customers and partners. Low cost resilient Arm at the edge is a key potential differentiator for us.

— Chris Wolf (@cswolf) November 6, 2018

Regarding #ESXpi specifically, we do see the resiliency use case as interesting, even for some small single purpose VMs running a Linux micro kernel. Regardless, the larger effort to slim the ESXi footprint will benefit all edge use cases.

— Chris Wolf (@cswolf) November 6, 2018

One use case that I think is worth exploring is a cheap vSAN Witness Appliance (which today can run as a VM or on bare-metal). We have a number of customers who manage a large number of vSAN ROBO sites (5-10K+) and being able to reduce the cost of the infrastructure is something these customers are always thinking about. For those that do not think an rPI can ever be feasible, there are plenty of other ARM systems that have 4GB+ memory that can also be used. Just think of the possibilities!

#ESXionrPI 😉

vSAN Witness would be awesome use case! https://t.co/YyY7lrIxRk

— William Lam (@lamw.bsky.social | @*protected email*) (@lamw) November 6, 2018

Lastly, I had a number of folks ask me about joining the ESXi on ARM Beta or where to download the ISO for ESXi on ARM. Unfortunately, there are no plans at the moment. The ESXi on ARM project is still in development but who knows ... maybe I might be able to convince the team to make it available if there is a strong demand from the community? 😉 Leave a comment if you are interested! 

More from my site

  • Cluster API BYOH Provider on Photon OS (Arm) with Tanzu Community Edition (TCE) and ESXi-Arm
  • Hybrid (x86 and Arm) Kubernetes clusters using Tanzu Community Edition (TCE) and ESXi-Arm
  • Stateless ESXi-Arm with Raspberry Pi
  • vSAN Witness using Raspberry Pi 4 & ESXi-Arm Fling
  • My Raspberry Pi 4 BOM for ESXi-Arm Fling

Categories // ESXi, VMworld Tags // Arm, ESXi, ESXpi, Raspberry Pi, rPI

Comments

  1. *protectedAndreas Cederlund says

    11/08/2018 at 12:21 am

    I'll add one more use case - SDWAN scenarios with NSX. Setting up L2/L3 connections to customer sites with NSX, or expanding data centers easily would be a great use case for running on ARM. For remote offices that don't need any local servers, an RPi in combination with fan-less switch would be an excellent offering.

    Maybe the next step could even be having ESXi run on the Open Networking switches from multiple vendors - now THAT would really take things to the next level!

    Reply
    • *protectedMichael Ryom (@MichaelRyom) says

      11/08/2018 at 11:00 pm

      +1 nsx and sdwan 👍

      Reply
    • *protectedOmarVR says

      11/09/2018 at 9:07 am

      NSX is precisely what popped into my head the moment I saw ESXi running on a Pi. Really looking forward to it.

      Reply
  2. *protectedAriel Sanchez Mora says

    11/08/2018 at 12:35 am

    I think there is strong demand for this. Lots of us already have raspberry Pi's running Linux and we find it to be an "almost there" desktop replacement.
    If VMware releases an ARM beta program and related HCL, I'm sure the #vCommunity will get those newer/more capable ARM microservers and it will be a very exciting time. Maybe even run ESXi on a cel phone!
    ARM = more efficient computing. Combine it with NSX and 5G bandwidths, and this is the future.

    Reply
  3. *protectedsmokex365 says

    11/08/2018 at 1:16 am

    I'd love to see a lightweight vCenter come from this tech. Multiple, cheap and redundant vCenters and vSAN witnesses running on a network freeing up resources on your hosts.

    Reply
  4. *protectedDaniel B says

    11/08/2018 at 4:09 am

    Definitely interested in the beta if there'll be one 🙂

    Reply
  5. *protectedNathan says

    11/08/2018 at 4:22 am

    Literally as soon as I can get my hands on this software I'm buying 4+pis for homelab use and studying for VCAP. Nested esxi is awesome, but a nuc with 32 GB ram is expensive and easy to overload with vcsa+esxi cluster

    Reply
  6. *protectedStefan Jagger says

    11/08/2018 at 4:41 am

    I think this might be a movement of some sort towards IoT and smart devices at home. Or maybe it's a vmware phone! 🙂

    Reply
  7. *protectedAruna Lakmal says

    11/08/2018 at 7:41 am

    Definitely, interested!

    Reply
  8. *protectedRichard Hughes says

    11/08/2018 at 8:14 am

    There are many boards in the budget ARM world with better processors and more ram. I have been looking at doing a KVM cluster with the RockChip64. https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=7147

    Reply
  9. *protectedRichard Hughes says

    11/08/2018 at 8:17 am

    YES ! Count me in on an ARM Beta! Check out my ARM podcast http://podnutz.com/category/minipc/

    Reply
  10. *protectedtrilobiitti says

    11/08/2018 at 9:37 am

    Get. Me. The. Download. Link. Thank. You. Got. 40. Of. Them. Pesky. Raspberries. 🙂 well in fact more than 40 but those make up the cluster. Would love to get an ESXi farm built out of that.

    Reply
  11. *protectedDarien says

    11/08/2018 at 11:53 am

    A big issue with IoT devices is that manufacturers abandon them and they end up vulnerable. I would rather have commodity ARM hardware, and run whatever software as a VM or container. Then capex would be the initial deployment. No need to redeploy 100s of edge devices because company XYZ dropped support for the hardware.

    Reply
  12. *protectedGianluigi says

    11/08/2018 at 12:29 pm

    Great news, I would expect a future collaboration with HPE and their lineup of ARM based servers (Moonshot).

    Reply
  13. *protectedDave Markham says

    11/09/2018 at 5:27 am

    William - I have so many incredible use case where an arm ESXi would be a dream come true. Please, count me in as another interested party in looking at any early beta (or even alpha)!

    Reply
  14. *protectedOmarVR says

    11/09/2018 at 9:08 am

    Count me in. Eagerly awaiting for a beta.

    Reply
  15. *protectedNoah Shelton says

    11/09/2018 at 9:26 am

    This would be wonderful to staging training , learning environments for automation, large scale clusters, etc.

    Reply
  16. *protectedkevin golding says

    11/10/2018 at 5:15 am

    i saw this on the IOT Booth as i was leaving, VMworld EUR on Thursday. i was googling very quickly.. i think there are a ton of use-case most of which are mentioned above. not least to say a cheap lab in my house.

    but some great ideas above, SD-WAN in a tiny branch, Money changing machines or MicroATM, most IOT requirements.

    Reply
  17. *protectedSean Chapman says

    11/10/2018 at 4:51 pm

    Yes Yes Yes!!! Beta please! Super excited for this! I love the direction you guys are going in. Pushing the datacenter to the edge. Was super bummed it's still in project phase. Keep pushing a release please!

    Reply
  18. *protectedMatteo says

    11/21/2018 at 8:05 am

    Interested.

    Reply
  19. *protectedDavid says

    11/27/2018 at 1:04 am

    Yes please I'd be very much interested in the Beta

    Reply
  20. *protectedMichael Munno says

    12/14/2018 at 7:12 pm

    Yes please, I would really like to be a part of this beta!

    Reply
  21. *protectedTommy Bee says

    01/18/2019 at 12:08 pm

    Hello Wiliam, is there any news? Also intrested in, regards from Czech Republic:))

    Reply
  22. *protectedAndrew Reynolds says

    01/23/2019 at 2:18 pm

    What makes me excited with this is the potential applications in the SCADA and IoT space. Security in an industrial environment is a real challenge. and having ESXi on ARM devices (and lower power machines) could bring the following benefits to the industrial environment:
    - The ability to vMotion PLCs controlling mission critical workloads, allowing power to be cut to electrical boards on production lines without bringing the line fully down
    - The ability to use NSX at the edge - bringing a level of security to the SCADA environment that it hasnt seen before, without causing major issues
    - enhanced ability and flexibility to backup / restore IoT and SCADA devices (Snapshotting a PLC prior to updating its software or making a programming change would be game changing)

    These are just a few cases I can think of off the top of my head, I cant wait to get my hands on an ARM build to test out a few test cases

    Reply
    • *protectedKevin Golding says

      01/24/2019 at 2:51 am

      I think you have hit the nail on the head. While SCADA systems do some critical tasks, not all manufacturers have included functions around those you mentioned, and flexibility isn’t great. Tiny clouds everywhere (fog like) would be an awesome industry. Otherwise we stuck with doing it on lots of NUCS 🙂

      Reply
  23. *protectedTomas says

    01/27/2019 at 11:53 pm

    Count me in, just ordered the new pi, now waiting for the release of ESXi on ARM!

    Reply
  24. *protectedDany Bradet says

    03/23/2019 at 9:30 am

    Count me in too, i'm running Pi for a while now!

    Reply
  25. *protectedRico says

    03/30/2019 at 3:19 pm

    Very interested in this as a vSan witness for small office 2 node clusters.

    Reply
  26. *protectedAdam Powell says

    04/25/2019 at 2:40 pm

    I’m also interested in the beta as I have been working on this myself

    Reply
  27. *protectedMattias Nordlund says

    05/14/2019 at 11:22 pm

    We are developing software (Firewall VNF) for the Edge, currently for KVM on ARM, and would be very inters test in coming in contact with you guys about having it run on ESXi for ARM also.

    Reply
  28. *protectedUlrich Hilmer says

    06/27/2019 at 7:50 am

    Pi 4 is out - 1-4GB RAM, USB-C, 1Gbps Ethernet .. so very interested in Beta to test ESXi on this machine

    Reply
  29. *protectedOliver says

    07/04/2019 at 11:45 pm

    Adding a comment to indicate interest in helping test ESXi on ARM (specifically the new Pi 4)

    Reply
  30. *protectedDjik says

    07/10/2019 at 7:29 am

    Me too, very exiting to test ESXi-ARM beta on RB PI 4 cluster 🙂

    Reply
  31. *protectedJK says

    07/23/2019 at 6:49 am

    Been looking for the image... Very interested

    Reply
  32. *protectedKrystian says

    08/30/2019 at 3:10 am

    I'm interested too! Have two Pi 4B and three Pi 3B+. Testing ESXi-ARM beta on a cluster made of them would be very exciting!

    Reply
  33. *protectedRichard Hughes says

    09/17/2019 at 5:34 am

    I have a pair of 4GB Pi 4s & wolud love to test ESXi on them!

    Reply
  34. *protectedmatt dunlop says

    09/30/2019 at 10:39 am

    we have been wanting to put it on our pi for a while now we have the new pi 4 i think it would work great.
    also we have a few odroids that we would like to test also.

    Reply
  35. *protectedAntonio says

    10/12/2019 at 2:41 am

    very exiting to test ESXi-ARM beta on RB PI 4 RB Pi3+ and Nano Fire cluster

    Reply
  36. *protectedRodrigo says

    10/18/2019 at 1:07 pm

    I am very interested to try ESXi on raspberry, i need try to do some projects over this platform

    Reply
  37. *protectedChad Steele says

    11/17/2019 at 4:33 pm

    Very interested, have a 6 node cluster that I would love to run as a lab in my cubicle at work. Work in GSS Infra support so having a real operational lab is essential.

    Reply
  38. *protectedabinyah says

    01/15/2020 at 9:04 am

    Still not sure if you'll release ESXi for ARM Beta? You definitely need to do this sooner rather than later !!!

    Reply
  39. *protectedJames G. says

    09/25/2020 at 6:08 pm

    We need ESXi or Docker . . . I prefer the former . . .

    Reply
  40. *protectedAndy says

    10/06/2020 at 1:01 pm

    ITS HERE!!!

    https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2020/10/announcing-the-esxi-arm-fling.html

    Reply
  41. *protectedlola2010cutie says

    10/21/2020 at 9:43 am

    I am going to test this out, but is it possible or feasible to deploy a tiny VCSA 6.7 or 7.0 on a Pi 4? Given in a home lab environment, you would only have a few (3 to 6) ESX host. But given Pi4 are locked in at 8GB, will see what happen

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      10/21/2020 at 9:58 am

      No, you can NOT run x86 on Arm 🙂

      For vCenter Server, you will still need x86 infrastructure but after that, it can manage ESXi-Arm hosts

      Reply
      • *protectedlola2010cutie says

        10/21/2020 at 3:59 pm

        Oops, fair point. As VCSA is always like a chicken or the egg when deploying a green field ESX environment, a simple/cheap/compact VCSA would be cool. Thank you for your speedy response

        Reply

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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