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You are here: Home / ESXi / ESXi on Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny

ESXi on Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny

09.20.2023 by William Lam // 28 Comments

Earlier this year, I came to learn about an interesting system from Lenovo called the ThinkStation P3 Tiny, which packs a ton of potential for its tiny form factor.


Funny enough, I have never actually worked with a Lenovo kit before, so I was definitely interested in getting hands on with this system. In fact, with the recent announcement of VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator (VECO), the P3 Tiny could also make for an interesting candidate for deploying at the Edge using Project Keswick! 😄

Thanks to the Lenovo ThinkStation team, I got the opportunity to explore the P3 Tiny and see what it can offer to the VMware community.

Compute

There are four primary Intel CPU options (Core i9, i7 and i5) to select from across 12 diffrent configurations with varying base CPU frequencies:

  • Intel Core i9-13900T 24 Cores 32 Threads (8P+16E)
  • Intel Core i9-13900 24 Cores 32 Threads (8P+16E)
  • Intel Core i7-13700T 16 Cores 24 Threads (8P+16E)
  • Intel Core i7-13700 16 Cores 24 Threads (8P+16E)
  • Intel Core i5-13600T 14 Cores 20 Threads(6P+8E)
  • Intel Core i5-13600 14 Cores 20 Threads(6P+8E)
  • Intel Core i5-13500T 14 Cores 20 Threads(6P+8E)
  • Intel Core i5-13500 14 Cores 20 Threads(6P+8E)
  • Intel Core i5-13400T 10 Cores 16 Threads (6P+4E)
  • Intel Core i5-13400 10 Cores 16 Threads (6P+4E)
  • Intel Core i3-13100T 4 Cores 8 Threads (4P + 0E)
  • Intel Core i3-13100 4 Cores 8 Threads (4P + 0E)

You typically do not see an Intel Core i9 being offered in these smaller form factor systems, so this is certainly a welcome addition for those interested in having the maximum number of cores.

UPDATE (11/05/24) - Thanks to reader Zachary, who shared the P3 Tiny now officially supports up to 96GB of memory using 2 x 48GB DDR5 SODIMM, which he has personally confirmed!

While the P3 Tiny supports DDR5 4800 SO-DIMM memory, it is not compatible with the new non-binary DDR5 48GB memory modules, which in theory would have enabled a total of 96GB of memory. When I attempted to boot the system with 96GB of memory, the system would not post and the screen was blank without any error sounds that would have indicated an issue. It definitely would have been awesome if the P3 Tiny could support 96GB of memory, which would have made it that much more powerful!

Form Factor


The P3 Tiny is pretty compact with the following dimensions: 179 x 182.9 x 37mm and for relative size comparison, it is smaller than a Supermicro E200-8D but slight larger (~1.5x) than the classic 4x4 Intel NUC. For a more detailed mechanical design break down, see the Specifications section.

Network


The networking out of the box on the P3 Tiny is a single Intel I219-LM (1GbE), which ESXi fully recognizes thanks to the productization of the Community Networking Driver for ESXi. Lenovo does also provide a few additional ethernet-based add-ons that utilizes the the low-profile expansion slot and can support either an Intel I350-T2 (2 x 1GbE), Intel I350-T4 (4 x 1GbE), Broadcom BCM5720 (2 x 1GbE) or Broadcom BCM5719 (4 x 1GbE), all of which are supported by ESXi. This means you can potentially have up to 5 network interfaces depending on the configuration you choose.

If you need to add faster networking, you could opt for the single Thunderbolt 4 port via the low-profile expansion slot and use one of these Thunderbolt 10GbE solutions for ESXi and/or look at USB-based networking by using the popular USB Network Native Driver for ESXi Fling.

Storage


For storage, you can install up to 2 x M.2 PCIe x4 Gen 4 (2280) which are easily accessible underneath the P3 Tiny after removing a single screw from the back, which is quite nice from a serviceability standpoint. You can setup vSAN or standard VMFS, but for the former you will need to install ESXi on either a USB device or add additional storage using the lower-profile expansion slot by using the the single Thunderbolt 4 port. Here are some Thunderbolt M.2 NVMe solutions for ESXi which can provide you with additional storage capacity.

Security


For those interested in ESXi attestation capabilities, you will be pleased to know that the P3 Tiny includes a discrete TPM which is fully compatible with vSphere as you can see from the screenshot above. As some of you may know, not all systems include a proper TPM device and for consumer systems, they typically prefer the cheaper fTPM which is not supported with ESXi.

Graphics


The graphics is what makes the P3 Tiny really shine as you not only get the built-in Intel integrated graphics (iGPU) which you can use, but you also can get add an additional NVIDIA discrete GPU (dGPU): T400 (4GB), T1000 (4GB) or T1000 (8GB) using the low-profile expansion slot.

Note: One thing to be aware of is that if decide to add the extra NVIDIA GPU, make sure your monitor is connected to the dGPU rather than iGPU if you need to enter the system BIOS. It took me awhile to figure out the default behavior for entering the BIOS as that is only available when the monitor is connected to the dGPU. Furthermore, the dGPU uses a Mini DisplayPort (mini DP), so if you only have HDMI, you will also need a mini DP to HDMI converter. Once you are in the BIOS, you can change this default behavior (automatic) to prefer the iGPU, but for the initial setup, you will need to connect and use the mini DP.


As expected, the Intel iGPU (UHD 770), shown above can be successfully passthrough and consumed by an Ubuntu VM by following these instructions HERE.


For my P3 Tiny, I had it configured with the higher-end T1000 (8GB) model and as you can see from the screenshot above, I was able to pass that through to an Ubuntu VM and install the required drivers to have it fully recognized.


Once the NVIDIA graphics drivers are installed, we can see that it is properly claimed by the Ubuntu VM (pictured above) and I can also use the nvidia-smi utility (pictured below) demonstrating that everything is functional.


One thing to note is that both the T400 & T1000 do not support NVIDIA vGPU, meaning you can not share the physical GPU across multiple VMs and passthrough is the only way to consume the GPU.


While the Intel iGPU can not be passthrough to a Windows VM (known issue with Intel graphics drivers for Windows), the NVIDIA dGPU can indeed be used with a Windows based system. As demonstrated in the screenshot above, I was able to successfully passthrough the T1000 to a Windows 11 VM and all drivers installed without any issue.

With all the interests in AI/ML these days, having an NVIDIA GPU option, while not the most powerful can still be beneficial for folks interested in exploring this space and you can use dGPU for training scenarios while using the iGPU for inferencing.

ESXi


The latest release of ESXi 8.0 Update 1 installs fine on the P3 Tiny without any issues, no additional drivers are required as the Community Networking Driver for ESXi has been productized as part of the ESXi 8.0 release. Since vSphere 8.0 Update 2 was also recently announcement, I figured I would also put that to the test and I am pleased to share that it also installs flawlessly on the P3 Tiny! If you want to install ESXi 7.x, you will need to use the Community Networking Driver for ESXi Fling to have it recognize the onboard network devices.

It is recommended to disable the E-cores within the BIOs to prevent ESXi from PSOD'ing due to the non-uniform Intel CPU cores, which will result in the following error "Fatal CPU mismatch on feature". To update the CPU cores settings, enter the Lenovo BIOS under Advanced->CPU Setup, adjust either the Core Multi-Processing (P-Cores) or Efficient (E-Cores) settings.


If for some reason you prefer not to disable either the P-cores or E-Cores, then you can add the following ESXi kernel option cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic=FALSE to workaround the issue which needs to be appended to the existing kernel line by pressing SHIFT+O during the boot up. Please see this video HERE for the detailed instructions for applying the workaround.

Note: If you decide NOT to disable either E-Cores or P-Cores, you may also run into an additional PSOD when powering on a VM with GP exception in world message. To workaround this problem, please see this blog post HERE.

Project Keswick

Finally, with the small form factor of the P3 Tiny, it can also provide a nice platform for an Edge deployment and what better solution to try than the recently announced Project Keswick! As you can see from the screenshot below, I was able to successfully deploy Keswick on the P3 Tiny and have it auto-register with the Keswick Cloud Service, ready for container or VM-based workloads!

More from my site

  • ESXi on Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra
  • ESXi on SolidRun V3000
  • Is there a vSphere REST API for ...
  • New detailed GuestOS data in vSphere 8.0 Update 2
  • Heads Up - ESXi 8.0 Update 2 requires XSAVE CPU instruction even with allowLegacyCPU=true

Categories // ESXi, vSphere, vSphere 8.0 Tags // ESXi 8.0 Update 2, Lenovo, vSphere 8.0 Update 2

Comments

  1. *protectedlynn says

    09/20/2023 at 4:10 pm

    I see you also have a P3 ultra box. Did you try the non-binary DDR5 48GB memory modules with that?

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      09/20/2023 at 4:52 pm

      Yup. Sadly, it’s the same outcome. I still need to do the Ultra write up, when I get some time

      Reply
      • *protectedlynn says

        09/21/2023 at 9:16 pm

        What a pity! I had hoped to upgrade my p360 ultra with 192G RAM ...

        Reply
      • *protectedMarthur says

        09/26/2023 at 7:20 pm

        Thanks for testing this. I'm currently running a 4 node cluster of p360 ultras and was curious about the 48GB memory modules. I'm using a Mellanox ConnectX 4lx dual sfp28 and 900p optane cache in the available PCIe slots. Using the wifi/ekey m.2 slot with a m.2 to Nvme adapter as the boot drive. So far so good.

        Reply
    • Zachary Sandberg says

      11/05/2024 at 11:58 am

      I have a P3 Tiny and the 2x48GB NonBinary DIMMs are working fine for me and have been for almost a year now. Likely a BIOS update after you tired initially resolved this.

      Reply
      • William Lam says

        11/05/2024 at 3:48 pm

        Thank you for sharing Zachary! I’ve updated the article w/new info

        Reply
        • *protectedRichard Clayton says

          03/06/2025 at 5:36 am

          Hi William

          In theory, should this memory work in the P3 Tiny?
          Corsair Vengeance Black 96GB 5600MHz DDR5 SODIMM Memory

          Thanks
          Rick

          Reply
      • *protectedRichard Clayton says

        03/07/2025 at 4:10 am

        Hi Zachary
        I just tried Corsair Vengence 2x48 DDR5 5200Mhz SODIMM in my P3 Tiny but it won't POST, just a blank screen. I am running the latest BIOS. Could you please tell me what the exact brand and spec of the memory you are using? I presume I don't need to do anything in the BIOS setting to support this?
        Thanks
        Rick

        Reply
  2. *protectedSebastian Grimm says

    10/13/2023 at 9:27 am

    Hi William,

    Thanks for your informative post. I also have a P3 Tiny and would like to install an ESXI 8.0. Unfortunately I can only do it in embedded mode. Why is it that I can't install it correctly?

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      10/13/2023 at 9:30 am

      What do you mean only in embedded mode ... ?

      Reply
      • *protectedSebastian Grimm says

        10/13/2023 at 9:47 am

        In embedded mode, the ESXI is only loaded into RAM; you don't even get to the installation routine. You can configure it without any problems, but as soon as the computer is restarted, all settings are gone.

        Reply
        • William Lam says

          10/13/2023 at 9:49 am

          Do you have functional media, you should be installing ESXi on persisted device like SSD or USB, sounds like you may not have created a proper boot installation and hence getting into some weird state. I recommend using unetbootin, its super easy, plug-in USB device and point to ESXi ISO.

          Reply
          • *protectedSebastian Grimm says

            10/13/2023 at 9:55 am

            I create the ISO on the USB stick with the RUFUS program and use an ISO ESXI directly from Lenovo. This works great, even on other computers, just not on the P3 Tiny with the P/E cores activated at the same time. The ESXI decides itself during installation whether it chooses embedded or installed mode.

          • *protectedSebastian Grimm says

            10/13/2023 at 10:00 am

            As you also wrote, I came across the P3 Tiny because of its enormous computing power in such a small form factor. I wanted to install several Win10 VMs in parallel to make them available as remote computers and I need all cores if possible.
            It would be a shame if there wasn't a workaround.

    • *protectedSebastian Grimm says

      10/13/2023 at 9:45 am

      I have now followed your tip and deactivated the E-Cores in the BIOS and now I come to the ESXI installation window. Before that I always worked with cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic=FALSE and it didn't work.
      How did you get all cores running in ESXI?

      Reply
      • William Lam says

        10/13/2023 at 9:47 am

        I don't bother w/all cores because you can run into all sorts of unforeseen issue, this is WHY I recommend disabling E or P-Cores 🙂

        Reply
        • *protectedSebastian Grimm says

          10/13/2023 at 9:49 am

          But what about all that wasted computing power?

          Reply
  3. *protectedSushil says

    03/06/2024 at 4:26 am

    Hi,
    Thanks for great review. I bought Lenovo Thinkstation P3 Tiny however unable to use USB-C for display. I tried to use USB-C to HDMI and USB-C to DisplayPort cable but none work. I contacted Lenovo support and no luck. Please can you advise if this box supports Display using USB-C. Thanks

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      03/06/2024 at 5:57 am

      Please re-read blog for your answer

      Reply
      • *protectedSushil says

        03/06/2024 at 5:48 pm

        Sorry. I did not get answer of my question from blog. I am not using ESXi, I did not make any change in system. Thanks

        Reply
  4. *protectedHH says

    03/19/2024 at 8:28 pm

    Hi William,

    Great post. I have 2 x P3 Tiny's to set up a testlab. Esxi 8.0U2 installs flawlessly, but I am having a lot of trouble with dropped packets on vmk0.

    I was able to confirm lost packets using "esxtop > n", it is most noticeable when uploading files into the local data store via the Host client or via Vcenter. The lost packets range from 17-50%.

    It occurs to both P3 units. I've tried updating the BIOS, double checking that there are no MAC address collisions using "ARP -a", and making sure the IPs are unique to each unit.

    Is it possible that the network drivers allow installation, but are not 100% rock solid when using the ethernet?

    Reply
    • *protectedY_Y says

      04/02/2024 at 2:03 am

      nice to meet you.
      I am also facing the same problem and am having trouble.

      Reply
  5. *protectedOleksandr says

    08/10/2024 at 11:48 am

    Hello William,

    Perhaps, you can comment, since I can’t find answer anywhere (including manuals and official forums). Does BIOS has SR-IOV option in this model? Lenovo’s official online store offers an option to buy it with Intel I350 network card reinstalled and this NIC supports SR-IOV so this it’s capable of creating virtual PCIe devices that could be passed through to VMs.

    I’d appreciate if you can reply as SR-IOV is appealing for virtualisation.

    Reply
    • *protectedOleksandr says

      08/12/2024 at 2:40 am

      Seemingly, the author cannot answer. Doesn't matter, as I found a post on Reddit [1] covering this topic.

      [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/1dolfdb/comment/lhjzhww/

      Reply
  6. *protectedRichard Clayton says

    03/07/2025 at 3:02 am

    Does anyone have any experience of using 96GB Memory with the P3 Tiny? I just bought some and it hasn't worked. I'm looking for working brand recommendations.
    Its running the latest BIOS firmware.

    Reply
  7. *protectedR J Clayton says

    03/08/2025 at 11:21 am

    Finally got the Lenovo P3 working with 96GB of memory. It's a beast now 👍

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      03/08/2025 at 11:29 am

      What was it and which modules did you use? This will help others including specific BIOS/FW updates needed

      Reply
  8. *protectedPC says

    03/20/2025 at 12:50 pm

    Hi there,

    This is to advise on my configuration. I got 5x P3 Tiny with i7-13700T and 96GB RAM and 2-port 10GbE cards working. 3 of these were originally with 64GB RAM as the 48GB modules were not supported by BIOS. E-cores disabled. The RAM I use is Crucial 96GB DDR5 RAM 5600MHz (or 5200MHz or 4800MHz) Laptop Memory Kit, SODIMM 262-Pin, Compatible with 13th Gen Intel Core and AMD Ryzen 7000 – CT2K48G56C46S5. The 10GbE card is Mellanox CX4121A 25GbE. I haven’t tried it with 25GbE yet. All stable for almost a year now. No issues reported. These P3 are small but really powerfull devices. I love these provide the ability to add the 10GbE card.

    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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