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Interesting VMware Homelab Kits for 2023

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Similiar to my post last year on interesting VMware Homelab Kits for 2022, I figured it was time to put together the 2023 edition, especially with some of the kits that I have come to learn about or ones that are planned for release later this year.

The list below is not an exhaustive by any means, but I did try to look for unique kits that folks may not be aware of and/or that include interesting capabilities or designs that would support VMware ESXi without issues and be able to run various other VMware products on top like vSAN, NSX, Aria and Tanzu.

While pricing is just one of the many factors in the hardware decision process, I did limit the scope to the base kit costing sub-$2,000 USD. I also wanted to make sure that the latest ESXi releases will install and run without any issues, which is typically governed by the model of the onboard network adapter. Therefore, any system that requires an additional USB network adapter to install ESXi is automatically excluded from the list. The size and form factor is also just as important and most of the kits below take up very little space or can easily be mobile, if needed.

If there are other new kits that have been released or planned for 2023 that you feel should make the list, be sure to leave a comment below.

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Quick Tip - How to deploy vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) to legacy CPU without VMX Unrestricted Guest feature?

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I recently had a customer reach out who was having an issue deploying the latest vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 8.x to an ESXi host that had a CPU that was no longer supported. After the VCSA OVA was uploaded by the VCSA (UI/CLI) installer, it fails to power on the VM with the following error message:

The Intel "VMX Unrestricted Guest" feature is necessary to run this virtual machine on an Intel processor

This problem is only observed with older legacy CPUs that do not support some of the modern CPU instructions that is expected by most workloads today. There is workaround for those that still wish to run on unsupported hardware, which may yield other unexpected behaviors, by adding a VM Advanced Setting monitor.allowLegacyCPU = TRUE

However, there is a chicken/egg problem that user was not able to add this setting before the VM was automatically powered on by the VCSA Installer.

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ESXi on palm size iKOOLCORE R1

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Towards the end of 2022, I came to learn about a really fascinating mini PC called the R1, that is manufactured by a company called iKOOLCORE, which is based out of China. iKOOLCORE is described as specializing in open source firewall applications and the R1 adds some interesting networking possibilities as you will see shortly.


What really makes the R1 standout is that it comes equipped with four built-in ethernet adapters that is packaged into a super compact form factor with a pretty elegant design. In fact, the R1 might actually be the worlds smallest x86 system that literally fits in the palm of your hand! 😎

With the compact design and flexibility in networking, the R1 can certainly enable a number of interesting use cases for VMware Homelabs like running infrastructure systems (vCenter Server Appliance, VMware Cloud Builder, Active Directory, etc.) to networking services (DNS, DHCP, Firewall, VPN, etc). The R1 can also make for a great portable homelab that you can bring anywhere and not have to worry about space or noise and is powered simply through USB-PD (Power Delivery) which makes it even more friendly to travel with.

The only thing left was to get my hands on the R1 and thanks to the creator and designer of the R1, who goes by the name of Jackeroo, I was able to give the R1 a spin and explore it from a VMware Homelab perspective.

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