The number of Arm-based hardware kits has grown significantly in the last couple of years. Today, there are many more options to choose from including different form factors and even hardware from some of the more traditional x86 vendors, which also demonstrates the market opportunity and the demand for Arm-based workloads.
Running ESXi-Arm is definitely a great way to bring all the benefits of the VMware ESXi Hypervisor to your Arm-based workloads including leveraging the powerful vSphere platform by connecting that to an x86 vCenter Server.
As of this publishing this blog post (06/01/23), ESXi-Arm supports over a dozen different hardware platforms that spans Datacenter, Near Edge and Far Edge:
- Datacenter:
- Ampere Computing eMAG-based systems from Avantek and Lenovo (HR330A, HR350A)
- Ampere Computing Altra-based systems from Avantek and other distributors (experimental, single socket only)
- Ampere Computing Altra-based shapes from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (experimental)
- Arm Neoverse N1 System Development Platform
- HPE ProLiant RL300 Gen11 (experimental)
- Marvell OCTEON 10 (experimental)
- Near Edge:
- Far Edge:
If you want to use ESXi-Arm, which is completely free, we definitely recommend looking at this list of Arm hardware kits and you can always find the latest supported Arm-based hardware under the ESXi-Arm Requirements section.
With that said, we continue to see new Arm-based kits and SoCs that are being released on a regular basis and question that I typically see get asked from our customers and field is will this work with ESXi-Arm?
Unfortunately, the answer is not always straight forward and can depend on a number of factors including support for Armv8, Exception Level 2 (EL2) and UEFI+ACPI tables but even with UEFI support, there may still be board specific code that is still required before ESXi-Arm can properly boot. Ideally, in addition to meeting the requirements above, the Arm kit/SoC is also Arm SystemReady certified which would ensure the highest possibility that ESXi-Arm would properly boot and run.
Furthermore, just like ESXi-x86, we also need device drivers (network/storage) for the onboard devices or else you may need to resort to using USB-based networking and/or storage to be able to run workloads beyond just installing and running ESXi-Arm.
To help our users navigate beyond the officially supported Arm-based hardware kits listed HERE, I have put together a small list of some of the most commonly asked Arm kits/SoCs that I am aware of and worked with our ESXi-Arm team to confirm whether these would work with ESXi-Arm. This is not an exhaustive list by any means and if you have a particular kit you are interested to know whether ESXi-Arm would work or not, feel free to leave a comment below.
NXP Layerscape LS1026A/LS1048A/LS1088A
- ESXi-Arm Compatible: Maybe - ESXi-Arm should install fine, however there are no drivers for the onboard network adapter and a USB-based NIC would be required to properly function.
- Example Kits:
Rockchip RK3588/RK3588S
- ESXi-Arm Compatible: No
- Example Kits:
Rockchip RK3566/RK3568
- ESXi-Arm Compatible: Yes - Requires the Community Quartz64 UEFI firmware (please download the Pine64 instructions for more details) and at least 4GB of memory (ideally 8GB memory)
- Example Kits:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8CX
- ESXi-Arm Compatible: No
- Example Kits:
Apple Silicon
- ESXi-Arm Compatible: No
- Example Kits:
NVIDIA Jetson AGX
- ESXi-Arm Compatible: Yes
- Example Kits:
I am probably not alone in wanting to see ESXi for the Apple Silicon Mac mini or the Studio.
Autonomous tractors, mobile robots, telemedicine setop boxes, digitized chem labs, machining centers, etc. all these vendors face the same hardware iteration speed issue. So the glasses will stay. There is tremendous promise for change in the industry. VMware solves this equation better and earlier than its competitors by adding a robust (edge) hardware abstraction layer. Thanks William for the curated compilation! Great as always.
It would be nice to introduce ( = support & subscription !) ESXi on Arm, the sooner the better.
Hi, I cannot find the "Orange pi 5b plus" on OrangePi's website. Maybe it is the "Orange pi 5 Plus" ?
Yes, I had a typo. Its the Orange Pi 5 Plus (as you can see in the ESXi screenshot)
I have a Supermicro ARS-110M-NR server with Ampere Altra, Q32-17, 1.7GHz, 32C, (verified in the BIOS too) but when I install ESXi-fling 7.0.0, 22346715 the CPU is detected as "ARM Limited Neoverse N1 r3p1" by ESXi. Weird! Is there any updates I need to add to the esxi?
This was answered from ESXi-Arm team via email -
The information is not incorrect. The Ampere Altra processor is using the Arm Neoverse N1 platform. You processor contains 32 Neoverse N1 cores.
See in https://amperecomputing.com/press/ampere-altra---industrys-first-80-core-server-processor-unveiled
"The Ampere Altra processor based on the Arm® Neoverse™ N1 platform represents a significant breakthrough in performance and power efficiency for the hyperscale cloud and edge markets"
ESXi is reporting the identification from the cores themselves.
Hello William,
I have been following your articles and blog for a few years now. Really, really excellent information! I know this is a little off topic here but I'm hoping that you can help point me in the right direction.
I have a cluster of 4 ESX servers running on Raspberry Pi 4's that I have been running for a couple of years. I recently upgraded the Raspberry Pi's to the latest ESXi on Arm Fling (Build 22949429), which is version 1.15.
According to the documentation for the version 1.13 build I should be able to run these 4 ESX servers using HA with vCenter version 8 when using an FDM vib that is the same version as the vCenter 8 server.
My vCenter 8 server is running 8.0.2.00000 Build 22385739 but the newest version of the FDM vibs that I can find are vmware-fdm-8.0.1-21815093.arm64.vib
The vCenter Server download that I am using is from the VMUG program and it appears to be the only version of vCenter 8 that is available for download.
I have had the HA working with the ARM ESX server when using an older version of vCenter but you were stuck at a specific version that was prior to the auto deployment of the x86 FDM. I'd like to get the HA working again using vCenter 8.
Does you know if there is a matching ARM vib for the vCenter version that I am running? Is it possible to install the most current ARM vib to enable the HA for the ARM cluster?
Thanks very much,
Robert
Hi Robert,
The FDM version MUST match the version of vCenter Server or it will not work. I can confirm we currently don't have FDM VIB for vSphere 8.0 Update 2 and Update 2a, I'll share this w/Engr team and hopefully make them available in the future.
Hi William,
I want to setup a 2 node vSAN cluster in my home lab and was looking at the Firefly Station M2 (8GB model) as the witness host using ESXi ARM.
Can you confirm that it is fully supported?
By the way, do you know if it can be powered using PoE?
Thanks and regards
Renée
Hey William!
I managed to get a Firefly Station M2 (8GB model).
Now trying to get ARM ESXi running on it, but so far no luck.
I went thru all the ESXi Arm Fling Docs, but don't see a specific guide for this model.
You are referring to the PINE64 instructions for this device.
Does this mean that I need to get an USB TTL cable to perform the installation?
I managed to get UEFI installed following this tutorial:
https://github.com/jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi?tab=readme-ov-file
There is a pre-build image available for the Firefly ROC-RK3566-PC / StationPC Station M2:
https://github.com/jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi/blob/main/docs/firefly-ROC-RK356x-PC.md
But I don't understand on how to proceed from there.
After creating the ESXi installer USB key with Etcher, it won't boot from it.
Could you please guide me in the right direction?
Thank you very much!
Hi William,
I manage to get ESXi running on RK3588S StationPC (Firefly) Station M3, although you need to:
1. Contact maintainer of GitHub project edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588's owner for a debug build which fixes SATA M2 drive recognition
2. Use a 0bda:8153 USB Ethernet Dongle and plug it into USB-C port (use an C-A OTG adapter if needed)
3. Manually switch M2 port to SATA mode in UEFI Setup.
Hi William, big fan! Love the blog!
I've had ESXi running on the Rock 5a for some time. Here is the post https://forum.radxa.com/t/rock5a-esxi-smoke-test/20098
It needs network drivers for the onboard chipset, it would not require the USB ethernet dongle. Would you know any big brain people to make it happen?