Thanks to the Green Mini Host (Apple Mac Mini hosting and collocation provider) who were the first to publicly confirm that latest release of ESXi (6.7 Update 1) works on the recently announced 2018 Apple Mac Mini.
Conforming @VMware #ESXi runs on the new Mac Mini 2018! #macmini2018 @vGhetto @lamw pic.twitter.com/DRqQ4lsWn5
— Green Mini host (@macminihost) November 7, 2018
For vSphere/vSAN Home Lab enthusiasts, the price of the new Mac Mini, especially when it is fully loaded is probably a tough sale. However, for customers developing on MacOS including iOS development, CI/CD, build farms, gaming, etc. which benefit from running on vSphere. For these customers, support for ESXi on the new Mac Mini is extremely interesting, especially with the updated hardware giving these systems a significant boost in performance even when comparing to the current Mac Pro 6,1 and iMac Pro models. In fact, I had number of folks ping me after Apple introduced it during their keynote asking if ESXi would work on the Mini's.
UPDATE (06/25/20) - The Apple 2018 Mac Mini 8,1 is now officially on the VMware HCL and is fully supported with ESXi 7.0b, which contains the fixes mentioned above. See note below on 06/23 for more information.
UPDATE (06/23/20) - ESXi 7.0b has just been released and contains fixes for both the MacOS guest boot issue support for Thunderbolt 3 devices which now enables support for the vSphere 7 release. One additional enhancement, customers no longer need to configure the ESXi Advanced Setting to enable Thunderbolt 3 support, this is now automatically configured based on detecting an Apple hardware system such as an Apple Mac Mini 2018 or Apple Mac Pro 2019. This is a patch release and you will need to go to the VMware Patch Portal site to download and apply the update.
UPDATE (04/28/20) - ESXi 6.7 Patch 02 resolves a number of the issues mentioned below, please take a look at this blog post here for more details.
Disclaimer: 2018 Apple Mac Mini are NOT officially supported by VMware. The only officially supported Apple hardware platform is the Mac Pro 6,1 or Mac Pro 5,1 and Mac Mini 6,2 or Mac Mini 7,1. For more details, please refer to VMware's Hardware Compatibility List.
Now, before you run and go out to purchase a new Apple Mac Mini, there are a few caveats to be aware of:
- As of right now, to be able to boot and install ESXi (must be on USB key), Secure Boot must be disabled on the Mac Mini which you can find the instructions in this Apple KB. This was something that many had suspected would be required due to the new Apple T2 Security Chip which prevents booting non-Apple OS. You can find some details in a recent Apple whitepaper on the T2 chip which is good and short read. This is probably not ideal for most customers and could even be a deal breaker for some.
- Local SSD is currently NOT recognized by ESXi and is believed to be a result of the T2 chip which is preventing access. This means you will not be able to install ESXi on the local SSD device or consume it for VMFS.
- The new Mac Mini can be configured with a 10GbE on-board network adapter, however the device is currently NOT recognized by ESXi. Aquantia has released an official Native ESXi driver, for more details, please take a look here.
- If you boot ESXi with ANY device plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 ports, the system will PSOD. It does not matter if it is a native Thunderbolt 3 device or Thunderbolt 3 to USB-A device, a PSOD will occur. This has been resolved with latest ESXi 6.7 Update 3 release and PSOD no longer occurs when plugging a device into Thunderbolt 3 port.
MacOS VM fails to properly boot due to what looks like T2 blocking SMC access, see here for more details. This issue has been resolved in ESXi 6.7 Patch 02, please see here for more details.
Note: The above behavior is the same for the Apple iMac Pro, however the on-board network adapter for that system is not recognized by ESXi. If you wish to install ESXi, you will need to have a USB Network adapter and install the VIB from here.
If more details or progress is made with the new Mac Mini and running ESXi, I will update this article with more details. In the mean time, you can install ESXi with the known caveats above and the Mac Mini configured with 1GbE (default) is recognized by ESXi, so no special workarounds are required.
For those interested, Green Mini Host has reported the brand of the 10GbE network adapter as a Aquantia AQC107 (same as iMac Pro).
Today we received the 10Gb model as well. Unfortunately ESXi doesn't recognise the NIC out of the box (NIC is Aquantia AQC107)
— Green Mini host (@macminihost) November 8, 2018
Lastly, it also important to be aware that although memory is user upgradable, the storage is not. If you decide to purchase the Mac Mini with the intention to run workloads on ESXi, be sure to think about future storage needs. Both Mac Mini Vault and iFixIt have respective tear down of the latest Mac Mini with more useful info which you can find here and here respectively.
Thank you for this update. As soon as the announcement happened I’ve been watching your site for an update. I have two 2014 Mac mini’s running ESXi 6.0.
I would love if I could run vsan on 4 Mac minis for my lab testing. The damn 1u servers are too loud for tiny apartment.
Any idea how to install ESXi on a Mac mini with a 10Gb nic? I used the guideline of Jose (https://www.devtty.uk/homelab/Install-ESXi-With-USB-Ethernet-Only/), but unfortunately the installation stops at 85% and I get the error message "No vmknic tagged for management was found.". I already tried the installation with 6.5 and 6.7 and made sure I copied the weaselin.t00 to the installation media. As an external NIC is use the StarTech USB 3.0 to Dual Port.
I also tried the "Anker USB 3.0 to RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter Alu" but this gave me the same error message.
Did you think there is a chance that drivers will come out for the internal hard drive and thunderbolt ports? Or do you think the Apple T2 will permanently block access to internal storage?
I don't think VMware will ever make this work. I think most likely someone who care enough about this will make their own driver and get back to work. I know this Mac mini is exciting to play with due to size and everything. But I am betting end of day it's cheaper to buy 1u server or build your own lab machine for esxi. It was really sad to learn the internal SSD is useless. Does the Mac mini boot esxi Everytime from USB drive or you must let into boot it every time you reboot the machine?
So far I can only get my Mac Mini to boot into 6.7 U1 by holding down the "option" key at boot and selecting "EFI Boot". Even with Secure Boot disabled and set to allow booting from external devices, the Startup Disk utility still doesn't have the "EFI Boot" option - only one option to boot from the Mac OS X disk. Has anyone found a solution?
Have you tried this? https://www.williamlam.com/2013/01/configure-apple-mac-mini-to-default.html
Delete MAC partition from local SSD. You can do this from hold down opt+R during boot up
A maxed out mac mini would have worked for me as ESXi servers. A max mini runs circles around any kind of 1u server you could possibly build. You are not going to get 64gb ram or 6 cores working in a 1u. Just aint happening. So as kick butt mini server this hardware stands out! Oh well I am stuck with Skull NUC if I want compact power work horse.
I am willing to donate to a dev (in bitcoin) that can make the internal SSD at a minimum work with ESXi Just send me your bitcoin address.
What 1U servers have you been looking at that can only provide up to 6 cores? Currently you can get 56 cores and 3072 GB of RAM in 1U servers from Cisco, Dell, HP.
I would like to see that 56 cores 3073 gb in 1U server. I will order it.
You can eaisly build a nice 1u server. Well better.specs then the Mac mini .
You have no idea what you're talking about....
Very compelling but the price ($2,299.00, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD or $3,899.00 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD add $200.00 for the i7)
A refurbished Dell OptiPlex 7050 Micro is around $800 i7-6700 Processor (Quad Core), 1TB SATA3 and 32GB RAM (easy replaceable with an SDD drive)
Thanks for this thread, does the same apply to iMacs - i.e. can I get ESXi to install on an 2018,2 iMac (it doesn't have the T2 chip, but I am unable to see the SSD. ESXi sees the network though...
Is there a known process to run ESXi from the USB key instead of the SSD that be used to get past the drive controller issue?
The only way to run ESXi right now is to run it off the USB key, having said that, the SSD is still not visible and hence the challenge right now
Is there another alternative to run OSX on esxi except on mac mini/pro/etc..?
i tried to run the vmdk file on "regular" esxi poweredge server and it didn't run our of the box
i need to run OSX version 10.14
thanks
Please see https://www.williamlam.com/2011/08/when-can-i-run-apple-osx-on-vsphere-5.html
i added external storeage to the mac mini 2018 and running version 6.7u1 from usb drive. when I'm trying to deploy VM ether from iso file or from ova that I have from older mac mini the vm is on boot loop.
is there a special configuration that I need to do to run the vm's of osx 10.13 and 10.14?
thanks
Hey William,
I just got 2 of these with the 10GB NICs and have 2 more coming. Have you heard anything regarding getting the NICs to work on ESXi? Or, do you know of a USB A Ethernet adapter that would work for the time being? I should've read your post before I had them ordered...
Thanks
I don't personally have access to the new 2018 Mac Mini, so I can't say but I know others have tried my USB NIC Driver and it doesn't work. If there's any updates, they'll be published here
Thanks William!
Any ideas if you can BootCamp "Microsoft Hyper-V Server" on the new MacMini 2018. I'm curious if it would support the SSD and 10Gbe as I believe Windows 10 does.
I am also trying to run this on the new Mac mini.
I have tried to use Apple's ethernet dongle. It crashes the whole thing if connected via USB-C, and boots normally if connected via USB, though it isn't seen.
Suppose we find a way to boot it, the only way this would usable would be if we have a sort of passthrough for the 10GB network card and for Thunderbolt devices. But since plugging something to the USB-C ports seem to crash the machine, I guess one is out of luck.
By the way, any tips on how to configure the environment for compiling drivers under 6.7? I can't build the toolchain under CentOS 7.
Hi,
does it support SR-IOV ?
What about older 2012 mac mini ?
Thank You
I am happy to inform that things look promising: Aquantia is working on a driver for the 10Gb Mac Mini: https://francisaugusto.com/2019/ESXi-on-the-2018-Mac-Mini-networking/
I've updated the blog post. Aquantia went public, and now their driver for their 10GB NIC is available for everyone.
VMware and Apple both multi-billion $$$$ company's and we cant get some official support/drivers is ridiculous. William please see what you can do with your VMware contacts. Thanks.
Did anyone from VMware backend team reach out to Apple Engineering in trying to resolve this issue? Or we are going to wait forever?
Theres a linux patch now for the NVM drive on linux kernal
forgot to link: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/issues/71#issuecomment-512220563
Anyone actually got Mojave running on ESXi on the Mac Mini 2018? I am stuck in a boot loop. I read "5. MacOS VM fails to properly boot due to what looks like T2 blocking SMC access, see here for more details." Is there a workaround? If not there is really no reason to be running ESXi on a mac mini I think? The main reason is to be able to legally running a virtualised OSX, at least for me it was when I bought the mac mini.
Now I saw in the logs that
"DarwinPanic: panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f95de3b5e): "DSMOS: SMC read error K0: 133"@/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/DontStealMacOS/DontStealMacOS-27.200.2/Dont_Steal_MacOS.cpp:191"
But this is just en errornous claim, since running mac osx virtualized on a mac mini should be perfectly OK according to the EULA.
So is there a bug at Apple's side here?
Hi,
I am using the i5 model of Mac Mini 2018. I am planning to max out the RAM and use it for home labs to support my CCIE studies. I am not sure, if this will work out. I am not used to the ESXi and other stuffs.. Hence I am unable to take a decision.. Can some suggest if its a good idea to proceed with upgrading the Mac Mini to 64 GB RAM? Will this help in getting the labs done in my home? Thanks.
Regards,
K S Rathnam
Mac Mini 8,1 is now listed on VMware compatibility table, supported for Ver 7 of ESXi, 7.0b (patch1) required. NVMe storage not supported, some limitations on Thunderbolt 3 support.
Any updates on NVMe support? Hopefully we will be able to use the internal ssd in the future
NVMe coming soon I hope!! fingers crossed
I got ESXI 8 to install on a Mac Pro 2013 (6,1) The odd thing is that once you login to the web interface once and do some things and then exit the connection and come back in the Mac Pro has no IP address. It's like is goes to ip sleep or something and only a router reboot fixes this issue. Also I only got a warning that in future version ESXI won't be support on this hardware so I didn't have to bypass to install. Any ideas?