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You are here: Home / Apple / Update on ESXi on Apple Mac Mini 2018 & Mac Pro 2019

Update on ESXi on Apple Mac Mini 2018 & Mac Pro 2019

02.28.2020 by William Lam // 74 Comments

Although there has not been any news in some time regarding the support for ESXi on the latest Apple Mac Mini 2018 and the recently released Apple Mac Pro 2019, there has definitely been work happening behind the scenes at VMware. Today, I would like to share a pretty significant update as a result of some of these efforts.

MacOS Guest

One of the biggest issue which I had observed when using a T2-based Apple system with ESXi is that it would fail to boot a MacOS Guest and just keep rebooting the VM. I am very happy to announce that this issue has been resolved and ESXi can now properly recognize the Apple System Management Controller (SMC) device which is used as part of the MacOS Guest start up process. This now means a MacOS Guest will be able to properly boot on a T2-based Apple system.

Thunderbolt 3

Another impact of a T2-based Apple system with ESXi is that storage and networking devices connected to the Thunderbolt 3 ports are not visible. I am also happy to announce that this issue has been resolved and ESXi can now see PCIe devices that are attached to the Thunderbolt 3 ports.

An ESXi Advanced Setting change is required for Thunderbolt 3 to work correctly and the following command will need to be executed after installing ESXi:

esxcli system settings kernel set -s pciExperimentalFlags -v 16

Once the setting has been applied, a system reboot will be required and your PCIe devices will show up properly. In future, this additional configuration may not be required and can be detected based on the underlying hardware.

Both of the fixes mentioned above are included in the latest ESXi 6.7 Patch 02 (ESXi670-202004002) release which is available today! Hopefully this was the news that many of you have been waiting for 😀

UPDATE (09/02/21) - Per this official blog post, VMware will no longer pursue hardware certification for the Apple 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 for ESXi.

UPDATE (02/23/21) - The Community NVMe Driver for ESXi Fling now enables access to the local Apple NVMe device.

UPDATE (08/27/20) - The Apple 2018 Mac Mini 8,1 is now officially supported with ESXi 6.7 Update 3 which requires the latest ESXi 6.7 Patch 03 which also incorporates automatically setting the ESXi Advanced Setting for Thunderbolt 3 access.

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.

Now, before you rush out to start deploying MacOS Guests on either the Mac Mini or Mac Pro, I do have to mention that neither the Mac Mini 2018 or the Mac Pro 2019 will be officially supported by VMware. Due to the current situation that we are all in with COVID-19, personnel access to VMware facilities like many other organizations has been severely restricted and/or prohibited. In fact, much of the early validation was done by yours truly using a Mac Mini 2018 which I had access to (Thanks Michael Roy) as Engineering did not have access to hardware during the shelter in place orders. This also means that certifications of these platforms is still on-going and until these systems are officially listed on VMware's HCL, they will not be officially supported by VMware.

Disclaimer: VMware currently does not officially support the Apple 2019 Mac Pro7,1

Here is screenshot of a MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) VM running on a Mac Mini 8,1 (2018) with NVMe storage provided over Thunderbolt 3


Here is screenshot of a MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) VM running on a Mac Pro 7,1 (2019) with NVMe storage provided over Thunderbolt 3

Additional Notes:

  • The local Apple NVMe SSD is still not recognized by ESXi. A USB device or local NVMe device can be used to boot and install ESXi
  • External storage using either Thunderbolt 3 and/or network based storage such as NFS or iSCSI should be used for VM storage
  • Mac Pro and Mac Mini with 10GbE networking will still require a driver. Marvell (formally Aquantia) has also just released an official Native ESXi Driver for their AQtion based network adapter which you can find here (driver supported with both 6.7 and 7.0)
  • Fixes mentioned above will also be available in a future update of vSphere 7.0. vSphere 7 is now supported as of 06/23/20

More from my site

  • Aquantia/Marvell AQtion (Atlantic) driver now inbox in ESXi 7.0 Update 2
  • Apple NVMe driver for ESXi using new Community NVMe Driver for ESXi Fling 
  • Virtually Speaking Podcast: MacOS Virtualization and MacStadium
  • Retrieving Apple hardware details (Model, Serial, Board & EFI Boot ROM & SMC Version) from ESXi
  • Using vSphere Auto Deploy to Netboot ESXi onto Apple Mac Hardware

Categories // Apple, ESXi, vSphere 6.7 Tags // apple, esxi 6.7, mac mini, mac pro

Comments

  1. joea says

    04/28/2020 at 9:27 am

    Good news. I'll give it a shot on my 2013 Mac Pro already running a limping Catalina on local NVME SSD.

    Reply
  2. instig8r says

    04/28/2020 at 12:12 pm

    Haha! After reading your articles LAST NIGHT, I went ahead and installed Fusion on top of Catalina on my brand new 2018 Mac Mini. Arrrgh.

    Reply
  3. attix says

    04/28/2020 at 1:22 pm

    This is great news! I was looking for an solution to running virtual MacOS hosts and have used your guides in the past when running ESXI on the older 2012 Mac Mini's when was not yet working out of the box. Untill today these Mac Mini's are still up and running perfectly. We'll order some 2018 mac mini's now i think 🙂

    Reply
  4. Steve Ballmer says

    04/29/2020 at 8:14 am

    Awesome William.

    What's the deal with the Apple NVMe Support, would that be resolved soon?

    Reply
    • Oran Turner says

      06/01/2020 at 11:49 pm

      I second this. Can we can any kind of hint of possible progress?

      Reply
      • Steve says

        07/20/2020 at 7:03 am

        I'm interested in knowing as well, is this currently being worked on and just a matter of time or does the T2 chip make it not possible at all? Would love to upgrade my 2012 MM to a 2018, but not if it requires dealing with external storage.

        Reply
  5. Andrew says

    04/29/2020 at 3:26 pm

    Is there an ETA or rough timeline on when that ESXi 7.0 update will be made GA/released? Like 2 to 4 weeks from now?

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      04/29/2020 at 6:29 pm

      We can’t comment on future releases

      Reply
  6. Boaz says

    04/30/2020 at 12:30 am

    Great news! Thank you William.

    SO, did anyone try to replicate it? can i run ESXi and MacOS guests on the 2019 MacPro just by using a PCIe SSD adapter? Is the internal 10GBe ethernet fully working?

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      04/30/2020 at 5:30 am

      Boaz,

      Did you see the "Additional Notes" section regarding the 10GbE 🙂

      Reply
      • Alan says

        12/02/2020 at 1:32 pm

        Hope I didn't overlook an existing answer, but... ESXi doesn't let me install without a network adapter. My 2018 Mac Mini has the 10GB Ethernet that doesn't detect without additional drivers. Even after using a temporary USB ethernet adapter, I'm finding a lack of success getting the 10GB Eth drivers (from your link) installed, let alone during the ESXi installation process. Any step-by-step how-to's for this?

        Reply
  7. Kevin Ou says

    04/30/2020 at 11:44 am

    That's great news! Does this mean we can also use a Thunderbolt 3 to fiber adapter to mount network based storage through fiber connection(s)?

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      04/30/2020 at 11:47 am

      Yes, assuming the device is either supported on VMware HCL or its just recognized by ESXi if it was installed locally on the system. Remember, TB3 is just extension of the PCIe bus

      Reply
  8. Carlo Fonseca says

    04/30/2020 at 1:25 pm

    Thanks for your implication William, I really appreciate your work on this.

    Reply
  9. mahmoud says

    04/30/2020 at 3:08 pm

    Hi William Lam ,

    until now i can't install ESXi6.7 U3 on Mac Pro 2019 via external hdd, can you please tel or give link for installation.

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      06/02/2020 at 6:22 am

      Can you provide a bit more information on what you mean by "can't install"?

      Reply
  10. georgegger says

    05/28/2020 at 2:20 am

    I am a bit confused. I run a setup of 5. Mac Pros .6.1 with the sonnet enclosure and some HP MSAs Fiber as storage. I use a thunderbolt PICe Extender because I have to with a 6.1. Cant I just use my Attos Celerity PCIe card DIRECTLY in the 7.1 ?

    Reply
  11. pigggg says

    05/29/2020 at 2:16 am

    macmini 2018,install esxi 7.0
    disable security and set boot other disk
    upload macjava 10.15 iso to datastore
    when install guest os,the vm reboot again and loop

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      06/02/2020 at 6:21 am

      Did you read the blog post? ESXi 7.0 does not currently work, the update mention was for ESXi 6.7p02

      Reply
  12. Dmitry Yasser (@DmitryYasser) says

    06/16/2020 at 12:53 pm

    Hi William,

    Thanks for your blog.
    VMware Compatibility Guide says Macmini7,1 can officially run on 6.7 U2. Is it safe to install 6.7 U3? Or I need to stick to 6.7 U2 as per HCL?

    Reply
  13. georgegger says

    06/26/2020 at 4:10 am

    does the Mac Pro with ESXI recognise pcie cards ? on the 6.1 we had to use a pcie extender for a fibre channel card, here I just could pop it in right ?

    Reply
  14. AjantiDaggar says

    07/08/2020 at 10:29 pm

    will this command also allow thunderbolt 1 or 2 storage device usage on MacPro 6,1?

    esxcli system settings kernel set -s pciExperimentalFlags -v 16

    I'm running ESXi 7, but understand this might only work in 6.7 for now.

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      07/09/2020 at 6:17 am

      The advanced setting is *only* applicable for T2-based Mac, so this does not apply to previous generations of Mac, TB should just work which many customers have been doing for years. In ESXi 7.0b which was recently released, this advanced setting has been incorporated, so when installed on T2-based Mac, customers no longer have to apply this setting.

      Reply
  15. E_DESCLAUX says

    08/28/2020 at 6:27 am

    Hello, At this time, only macmini 2018 is in HCL for 6.7U3 and 7.0, do you know if Mac Pro 2019 will be added soon or is there knowed issues that prevent to add it?
    Thanks in advance for the reply...

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      08/31/2020 at 6:38 am

      There's no ETA for the Apple Mac Pro 2019 on VMware HCL. Although it has worked in limited testing, we have seen one issue which we've not been able to fully diagnose and due to the COVID-19 situation and lack of hardware access to Engineering teams, there is no ETA. I will say that several other customers have shared that they have deployed ESXi 6.7/7.0 on Mac Pro 2019 and have not had any issues thus far.

      Reply
  16. Steve says

    09/01/2020 at 7:03 am

    Hi William,

    Do you know if the local Apple NVMe SSD will ever be supported (is the issue still being looked into) or does the T2 chip essentially prevent us from using that drive altogether?

    Thanks!

    Reply
  17. Steve Wood says

    09/15/2020 at 9:54 am

    I've successfully installed 7.0b on my Macmini 8,1 but I'm not having success with external storage on the TB3 ports. Under 7.0b does the TB3 port support USB devices or can it only work with straight TB3 devices? I have a m2 SSD in an USB-C enclosure that I've used on the same Macmini under Catalina, but its not recognized when I plug it in under Esxi. Or could it be the SSD itself is not supported/recognized by Esxi?

    Reply
    • Neil says

      09/15/2020 at 6:04 pm

      With your install did you install it on the internal SSD or an external TB3 drive? I can't get it to recognise the NVMe SSD so no point moving forward with it.

      Reply
      • Steve Wood says

        09/16/2020 at 5:55 am

        There's still no support for the internal SSD. I had to install to the thumbdrive. That's why I'm trying to get it to recognize an external drive. My use case doesn't really allow for network based storage for the VMFS.

        Reply
    • Marc Lindquist says

      02/05/2023 at 2:52 pm

      Did you ever get your TB3 Storage to work? I just tried to put 7.03J on mine but the TB still won't recognize any of my drives

      Reply
  18. Tom says

    09/23/2020 at 5:17 am

    Thanks for this article! After reading it I thought now it might be the time to replace our last Xserve (sigh!) with a Macmini8,1.

    I've installed ESXi 7.0.0 (Releasebuild-16324942) on a USB thumb drive, everything worked fine including the driver for the Marvell AQtion 10GbE Ethernet NIC.

    Now I'd like to use a Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 SSD as datastore. I thought this thunderbolt device should now be recognised by ESXi. It's not, but it should, right? If so, what may I have missed?

    Reply
    • Tom says

      09/23/2020 at 7:56 am

      I now tried the latest 6.7U3, the thunderbolt storage is not available with this version either.

      However, the 'thunderbolt hba' driver for vmhba0 has loaded (so it does with 7.0):

      # esxcli storage core adapter list
      HBA Name Driver Link State UID Capabilities Description
      -------- ------ ---------- ------------ ------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
      vmhba0 nvme link-n/a pscsi.vmhba0 (0000:44:00.0) Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981
      vmhba32 vmkusb link-n/a usb.vmhba32 () USB

      But there is no storage, just the USB thumb drive is available:

      # esxcli storage core device list
      mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0
      Display Name: Local USB Direct-Access (mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0)

      Reply
      • William Lam says

        09/23/2020 at 8:23 am

        Tom,

        Few comments:

        1) Its not enough to just use latest 6.7u3, you need to carefully read the blog post as it clearly mentions update on 8/27 that you need to apply 6.7p03 to whatever version of 6.7 you've got running
        2) TB3 is nothing more than PCIe extension and what this ultimately means is that just because you don't see storage device, does NOT mean TB3 isn't working but rather the device on the other end is possibly not recognized by ESXi. This is no different than if the storage/network device was plugged right into system. You need to make sure the device is on HCL, if you're using consumer grade NVMe, there's high possibility it won't work unless you're using standard Intel/Samsung/WD

        Reply
        • Tom says

          09/23/2020 at 8:45 am

          Thanks for your fast reply!

          I do have ESXi-6.7.0-20200804001-standard installed:
          # esxcli system version get
          Product: VMware ESXi
          Version: 6.7.0
          Build: Releasebuild-16713306
          Update: 3
          Patch: 116

          Also thanks for the clarification about TB3 and attached storage.
          To be honest, I usually don't have to deal with uncertified hardware.
          So I now own an expensive SSD doorstopper and have to search for a supported TB3 device. 🙂

          Reply
          • William Lam says

            09/23/2020 at 9:09 am

            You will NOT find any supported TB3 storage devices, since TB3 is fairly limited in platforms its available in. You'll find TB3 networking devices which ATTO is a partner and has some devices officially certified. What you should consider is TB3 storage enclosure https://www.williamlam.com/2019/06/thunderbolt-3-enclosures-with-single-dual-quad-m-2-nvme-ssds-for-esxi.html and then what you'd actually be looking up is NVMe (storage devices) that are on HCL. From there, ESXi will immediately see the device (assuming you've got the right version of ESXi setup)

            Hope that helps

  19. Suhail says

    09/24/2020 at 12:00 am

    Thanks for the blog, I was able to install esxi 7.0 on iMacPro 1,1 following your blog using the official aquantia drivers however I've haven't been able to setup TB3 hard drives. I've had no luck with "esxcli system settings kernel set -s pciExperimentalFlags -v 16". I'm guessing since unlike MacMini 8,1, the iMac Pro is not officially supported so the 8/27/20 update does not apply to it. Any idea if there is an alternative to enable TB3 support in unsupported devices?
    For reference I'm using Samsung X5 and can boot from it too but can't see it in esxi host.

    Reply
    • Suhail says

      09/24/2020 at 12:15 am

      Did not see the recent applies since i hadn't refreshed this page in a few days. The above replies answer my exact question!

      Reply
  20. Steve Wood says

    09/28/2020 at 12:56 pm

    Finally got some local storage working with a TB3 enclosure rather than the USB-C one I was trying. Samsung 950 Pro and 970 EVO both detected and work fine. An Intel one did not and in fact the MacMini would not boot Esxi 7.0 with it plugged in.

    Reply
    • Michael Brady says

      12/09/2020 at 9:18 am

      Hey Steven, do you mind sharing which TB3 enclosure worked for you?

      Reply
      • Steve Wood says

        12/09/2020 at 12:22 pm

        For sure.

        https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N67P39W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

        Reply
      • Tom says

        12/09/2020 at 4:29 pm

        For the record, I use the OWC Envoy Express: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/envoy-express
        Works fine so far (it's in use for a few months now).

        Reply
  21. Pascal Cimon says

    10/02/2020 at 6:21 pm

    Hi William, I've replaced my Mac Pro late 2013 that was running fine but getting old with a Mac Mini late 2018. I've added an OWC 10 GB Aquantia card to it and everything runs ok except for the temperature. It runs very hot. The fan is running but at low speed. ESX does not seem to increase the speed. Is there a way to increase the speed from ESX?

    Reply
  22. disbalance says

    10/13/2020 at 12:26 pm

    Hi all, could smb tell is it possible to install ESXI 7.0 u1 to internal SSD ?

    Or only external ? Also will be very thankful for the info how i can create datastore on external ssd on ESXi 7.0 ?

    Reply
    • Tom says

      10/15/2020 at 2:43 am

      No, the internal Apple NVMe SSD is not recognized by ESXi 7.0 U1.

      You'll need a USB 3 thumb drive to install ESXi.

      Furthermore a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure for M.2 NVMe SSDs and a M.2 NVMe SSD supported by VMware for a datastore. After some trial and error (see my commets above.. 😉 I ended up with a Samsung 970 PRO, M.2 2280 SSD.

      Reply
      • disbalance says

        10/15/2020 at 4:57 am

        I’m using Mac Mini 8.1, i installed ESXI 7.0 u1 to external SSD, but now i need to create a datastore on it.

        On ESXI 6.7 u2, after insttal VmVisor i create new partition with fb00 code and then used a command vmkfstools -C vmfs6 -S /dev/disks/ to create datastore.

        But now when I’m trying to do the same but after installing ESXI 7.0 i see that external SSD have partition "LOCKER" that using all space on SSD disk after installation. And i don’t how i could change it.

        Reply
        • William Lam says

          10/15/2020 at 5:45 am

          Please read https://www.williamlam.com/2020/05/changing-the-default-size-of-the-esx-osdata-volume-in-esxi-7-0.html

          Reply
  23. artagel says

    11/24/2020 at 4:22 am

    We have 2 beefy MacPro 7,1. When we deploy the latest 7.0 update iso, we can get it deployed, the NICs show the atlantic driver, but we have them connected to a 1gbps switch, and we can't get IP traffic to flow. I read in another post that I may have to set it to 100mb or find a 10gb switch. Is this something others experienced?

    We installed the latest 6.7 ISO and tried to upgrade to the latest patch, and it gets stuck. When I create a new iso with the latest patch, we get a PSOD with NOT_IMPLEMENTED bora/vmkernel/hardware/pci/bridge.c:372. I find that strange, since nobody seems to be reporting issues installing or upgrading 6.7.

    Any ideas?

    Reply
    • Dan says

      11/30/2020 at 7:07 am

      @artagel I'm also running 6.7 on the new MacPro 7,1 and having the same issue as you. I've tried to run various patches but am getting that same error "NOT_IMPLEMENTED bora/vmkernel/hardware/pci/bridge.c:372". I am able to do the non-critical patches fwiw. Of course it's the security patches that I really need. Build version is 16701467.

      I'm glad I caught your post about your 7.0 issue as I can see I'll probably still have issues if I try to go that route instead.

      Reply
    • specter345 says

      01/21/2021 at 1:49 pm

      @artagel did you ever find a resolution to this issue? We're experiencing the exact same things with NOT_IMPLEMENTED PSOD on the latest 6.7 and no network connectivity (even though the NICs are detected) in the latest 7.0. Thanks!

      Reply
      • Artagel says

        01/21/2021 at 3:56 pm

        There’s a specific version you can upgrade to that still works, after that any update causes the purple screen. It you get to 16701467 at least things will work and you can launch OS X VMs. We just received our 10gb Ethernet SFPs, so we are also going to see if we can get the built in Ethernet to work for ESXi 7. That’s been our major blocker as well.

        Reply
        • simplijm says

          09/24/2021 at 9:14 am

          @Artgel, sorry, this is a while after your comment but been struggling with this all month. Is that version 16701467 you reference 6.7.0, 6.7.0u2, 7.0b? I can get esx to install and run, but every VM I try just boot loops so hoping this gets me past that hurdle.....Thanks

          Reply
  24. Alex says

    12/15/2020 at 4:24 am

    I have Mac Mini 8.1 and I am attempting to install ESXI 7.0 u1. However, when I get to the location of where to install it does not recognize the local hard drive on the mini. It only recognizes the USB device. I have read and re-read your post, but I is it because the drive is not supported?

    Reply
    • Tom says

      12/15/2020 at 5:20 am

      Yes, unfortunately it's not.

      Quoting William from his (this) post:

      "Additional Notes
      - The local Apple NVMe SSD is still not recognized by ESXi. A USB device should be used to boot and install ESXi
      - External storage using either Thunderbolt 3 and/or network based storage such as NFS or iSCSI should be used for VM storage"

      Reply
      • Alex says

        12/15/2020 at 6:37 am

        Thanks for the quick response. Why would we use a perfect good 2018 Mac mini with 64 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage to run ESXi through a USB device? Are we getting any value from this hardware if we are running ESXi from a USB drive?

        Reply
        • William Lam says

          12/15/2020 at 7:30 am

          ESXi runs in memory after it boots up, so USB is actually a very common way to install 🙂 VMs on the other hand should definitely run on more reliable storage and in case of T2 based Macs, you’ll need to use network based storage OR storage connected via TB3

          Reply
          • Alex says

            12/15/2020 at 7:46 am

            I get that the installation of ESXi is common from USB, but my Mac will only allow the installation of ESXi to save to the USB device. It does not recognize the SSD drive on the Mac as a source for the installation. So, in this case ESXi is running off the USB not the drive within the Mac. I was hoping that ESXi would install on the hardware of the Mac mini and we would attach to network based storage for the VMs. How can it run from memory if it installs to the USB? Appreciate the assistance in helping me understand.

          • William Lam says

            12/15/2020 at 8:40 am

            Not sure I follow, but it sounds like you're new to ESXi. You may want to read up on some of the documentation on our official site or take some Hands-on-Lab, so you're familiar with some of the concepts.

            As I've already stated and outlined in the article, ESXi can not see or use the local Apple SSD due to T2 chip. If you wish to run ESXi, you will need to install that onto a USB device, this can be the same device that contains the ESXi installer (you can simply select it in the menu and follow the wizard). Upon reboot, make sure you boot from USB device (you can make that the default boot device by following https://www.williamlam.com/2013/01/configure-apple-mac-mini-to-default.html) and then ESXi will be loaded into memory and start running (this is how ESXi works regardless of the underlying HW). At this point, you will have ESXi running and you can configure network storage where you will store and run your VMs.

  25. Greg Christopher says

    02/11/2021 at 7:56 am

    Hi folks-
    Mac Pro 2019 - about 2 weeks old. I have been trying to get ESXi Going and I am also experiencing the aquantia issues on 7.0 - Actually they get recognized but not only don't "connect" but they knock out my whole network attached to the ASUS NT66U (running tomato). It's impressively bad LOL. I have been using the ESX cli commands to check on the NICS.

    I noticed:
    -when listing the NICS from the command line or by viewing the management network, the Mac addresses are completely wrong (Windows, Catalina, and my router however all see the correct Mac Addresses)
    -when using the esxcfg-nics -l command, I see one is "up" and "full duplex" and "connected at 1000Gbps". So it is reacting to the wire, but it is basically a denial of service attack on the network whenever it's plugged in.
    -The router doesn't seem to do anything (tail -f /var/log/messages) when the wire plugs in, so it's not communicating in any normal way.

    The drill :
    1) Using through the ESXCustomConfigurator (ESXi-Customizer-PS.ps1) to add the Exact acquantia driver bundle linked to above by William along with the latest ESX (I have used 7.0C and D) standard.
    2) Unetbootin to create the installer USB.
    3) Installing to a SATA drive I added internally (I used the J2i bracket and junk 8TB drive, but I am switching to SATA ssd's shortly). Eventually I'll probably install to a USB and set up a decent VMFS storage system. For now just using the 8TB SATA for everything to make sure this all works.

    I have tried the 6.7 builds but all seem to PSOD once we get to the yellow screen.

    So I think something is seriously up with the aquantia drivers- at least on ESX 7. Again, for whatever reason maybe the way I'm building things, the 6.7 only PSODS.

    I am thinking of trying that thunderbolt to ethernet connector (Looks like William already figured that one out!) just to see if I can get further, but no need to waste a thunderbolt slot when I have two really fast ethernet adaptors available. Hope someone is on the aquantia issue.

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      02/11/2021 at 9:03 am

      Hi Greg,

      Sorry to hear you're having issues with the AQC driver. Since the Mac Pro isn't officially certified, there's not too much we can do on our end and it seems like its related to the driver itself and use of ESXi 7.x. It would be best to raise an issue with Marvell (who acquired Aquantia) to better understand your setup, its possible maybe there's some firmware updates that's needed on Mac Pro, but they should be able to help you out

      Reply
  26. Greg Christopher says

    02/12/2021 at 10:17 pm

    Thanks very much for the reply-
    Just to confirm: I was able to install the same driver into the ESXi 6.7 build and they did work pretty well.

    Note: The mac address is still wrong inside ESX for the physical NICs, but somehow in operation it stays consistant and layer 2 is working just fine. Management network up and running. I wonder if this is still the linux-kernel based driver? If so it would explain the behavior in 7.0.

    Since Marvell is not really advertising the ESXi drivers on their site (A quick check doesn't list esx as a supported OS), it may be up to you guys to make sure it's not listed for 7.x if it's not a native driver. I'm not sure how to tell by looking at the bundle but guessing you may be able to.

    For my next trick, I am hoping to get it running from fusion directly off the partition. That way I can keep it running if I have the mac OS (or Windows with workstation) booted. I know fusion has a tool in the package directories to do so. The options for running esx virtualized only virtual disks but willing to experiment. Its on its own drive so no biggie if it gets nuked right now- I'll just reinstall.

    Reply
  27. die_ripps says

    03/07/2021 at 1:43 am

    Hi William, maybe you know that. Is it possible to use a Drobo5D3 (connected via TB3 to a Macmini 2018 running esxi) as VM storage? Or what is your preferred VM storage with a Mac mini as esxi server? Synology?
    Thanks so much and Best Regards,
    frank

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      03/07/2021 at 6:01 pm

      It depends on the storage devices on the other end of the TB3, if ESXi doesn’t recognize those devices, then it won’t work. You can use NFS or iSCSI which I believe these systems support if direct TB3 isn’t possible

      Reply
      • die_ripps says

        03/07/2021 at 11:35 pm

        Hi William, thanks a lot for your feedback! Ok I assume that there is no experience out there with a Drobo 5D3 device as TB3 storage for ESXi. In combination with the MacMini2018 it would be my favorite! @all experts here: let me know if you have this combo running properly.

        All the best,
        frank

        Reply
  28. 1oo7 says

    03/08/2021 at 3:47 pm

    Have you tried simply disabling Secure Boot on the Mac in question?

    Startup the Mac holding command-R to enter "Recovery" mode, go to Utilities > Startup Security Utility, and then select "No Security", whose description states, "Does not enforce security requirements on the bootable OS".

    I would tend to think that this would effectively disable the T2 chip.

    Might also be good to make sure FileVault is disabled for the boot drive.

    I don't see any mention that you've tried this option.

    Reply
  29. RyanV says

    04/20/2021 at 3:41 pm

    I was able to install on my Mac mini 2018, and Lexar M45 (LJDM45-64GABSLNA)usb drive. Didn't try the NVMe driver yet, because I planned to use external nvme drive.

    Quirk I found was once ESXi was installed I wasn't able to see any of my usb-c/tb drives, I had turn stop the usbarbirtrator with "/etc/init.d/usbarbitrator stop" command and eventually "chkconfig usbarbitrator off" so that my drives wouldn't disappear when I restarted. Not sure if passthrough will work with that off but, do not have a need as of now for that.

    Side Question: Has anyone gotten the shared clipboard to work with Mac guest on ESXi, either from windows or another Mac VMware client software? I tried both Mojave and Catalina guest OSs. I really thought this would work once I installed Mac guest os on Mac bare metal.

    I've tried connecting to the server from VMware Workstation Pro & Player, VMware Fusion, and Vmware client. Copy and Paste to/from remote machine does not work to Mac OS.I was really looking for a better RDP solution than VNC for a Mac and these client apps generally work better but no copy and paste makes them fairly unusable for end users

    Reply
  30. Anthony says

    04/26/2021 at 12:34 pm

    Wondering if anyone is having luck with 7.0U2 on the 2019 mac pro and running MacOS VMs. ESXi starts and runs fine, but trying to vMotion MacOS VMs to the mac pro, or trying to boot a MacOS VM end up with errors about the SMC not being available:

    "Failed to receive migration. The source detected that the destination failed to resume. An error occurred restoring the virtual machine state during migration. The Apple SMC device is not available. This virtual machine can run only on an Apple computer."

    When booting a MacOS VM, it just panics due to the SMC not being available.

    Reply
    • Stephen says

      06/22/2021 at 6:22 pm

      Hey Anthony,

      Having the same issue here with ESXi 7.0U2 on Mac Pro 7,1 hosts in a (currently) non-EVC cluster. Oddly enough, one of the hosts in the cluster runs VMs without any problems. The other 3 exhibit the same issue you mentioned, and the guests either get stuck in a constant reboot loop or power themselves off.

      ESXi was installed on all 4 hosts from the same media onto 4 matching Sandisk USB-C flash drives. Secure boot is off on all 4 hosts, as well. Trying to diff between the working Mac Pro and the non-working ones to see if I can spot any inconsistencies, but no luck so far.

      Going to give that specific bugfix version of 6.7 a shot tomorrow to see if this helps. If anyone has anything else worth trying I'm happy to give it a go.

      William et al, thank you for all of your efforts to champion and engineer enterprise-level virtualization on Apple hardware. This blog has been a huge help over the last few years.

      Reply
      • georgegger says

        02/01/2022 at 6:32 am

        How did you even get ESXI to install I tried 6.7U3 and now the latest 7 and all I can see is shutting down Firmware services right before the install screen should come..then it blanks out completely.

        Reply
  31. William Lam says

    09/07/2021 at 10:07 am

    FYI - In case folks have not seen/heard the news, VMware will no longer VMware will no longer pursue hardware certification for the Apple 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 for ESXi.

    Reference: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2021/09/update-apple-2019-mac-pro-71-for-esxi.html

    Reply
    • Dan says

      09/09/2021 at 12:23 pm

      🙁

      Reply
  32. Adrien Carlyle (@bruor) says

    10/24/2021 at 6:22 am

    When you're running OSX in a VM on Apple hardware, does iMessage activation work?

    Reply
  33. Adrien Carlyle (@bruor) says

    11/10/2021 at 3:37 pm

    In case anyone is interested, yes it does!

    Reply
  34. Brandon says

    01/19/2023 at 1:05 pm

    William,
    do you have any updates for Mac Mini 8,1 i7 2018, and ESXi
    I downloaded latest version but cannot get visible data stores.
    I got usb flash drive to boot installer, installer loaded to external SATA drive but cannot see any free space or any other drives.
    I saw you mentioned 7.0b (which is a patch that HCL is approved to work but that is an older version and I was able to download the patch but not the base the patch must be applied to)

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      01/19/2023 at 1:31 pm

      Sorry, I don't. If you have VMware Support, you may want to file a support request to see if they can help but I've not spent anymore time on Mac systems and ESXi as of late

      Reply

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William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native technologies, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

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