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Passthrough of Intel Iris Xe Integrated GPU on 11th Gen NUC results in Error Code 43

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I recently ran into an issue after enabling ESXi passthrough of the new Intel Iris Xe Integrated GPU (iGPU), which is available with the latest Intel 11th Gen Pro (Tiger Canyon) NUC and SimplyNUC Topaz. After installing the latest Intel Graphics Driver and rebooting the Microsoft Windows 10 (20H2) VM, I noticed Microsoft Device Manager would show the iGPU device with the following error message:

Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)


Unfortunately, this generic error message was not very useful in identifying the underlying issue. I was hoping the process was going to be seamless like it was for enabling passthrough of the iGPU in Intel NUC 10 (Frost Canyon) NUC, especially with the higher execution units for the 11the Gen NUC i3 (48 EU), i5 (80 EU) and i7 (96 EU).

I currently have a case open with the Intel NUC team and see if they can help investigate the underlying issue for their driver. For the time being, it looks like passthrough of the new iGPU is not fully functional when using ESXi 7.0 Update 2 and I will update this blog post if/when I have further updates to share.

Quick Tip - vSphere Permission to view vSphere with Tanzu Namespaces

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If you wish to create a custom vSphere Role that has the ability to view vSphere Namespaces which is part of vSphere with Tanzu, you will need to add the user to the following vSphere Single Sign-On Group: ServiceProviderUsers, which is located under Single Sign On->Users and Groups->Groups (2nd page) within the vSphere UI.


Once added, you can logout and log back in and the user should now see the vSphere Namespaces as shown in the screenshot below. In my example, I have a user named william which is created in the default vsphere.local domain and has been assigned the user the vSphere Read Only role along with this additional SSO group. They will be able to view all resources but will not have permission to make any changes to the infrastructure. If you are using Active Directory, the exact same process works and just make sure you log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

How to modernize your vSphere Alarm actions using the VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA)?

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The VMware Event Broker Application/Appliance (VEBA) solution makes it extremely easy for customers to build Event-Driven Automation that can react to over 1800+ vSphere-based Events using your favorite scripting or programming language of choice that includes PowerCLI, PowerShell, Python and Go to just name a few.

The benefits of VEBA can extend beyond just vSphere Events and can also be used with both new and existing vSphere Alarms. In fact, vSphere Alarms is just another a type of vSphere Event, which then makes it super easy to work with if you are already familiar with VEBA. Similar to the "triggers" that are supported with vSphere Events, the available options for extensibility in vCenter Server is super limited.


In addition to the limited options for extending vCenter Server, there are also valid security concerns with resource utilization and opening up access to run arbitrary scripts directly on the VCSA, which we all know is a bad practice for so many reasons. What if we could easily extend the actions to a vSphere Alarm to send notifications to Slack or Microsoft Teams, automatically file an IT Ticket or run specific automation or remediations tasks!?

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