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ESXi on SimplyNUC Moonstone

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SimplyNUC has been a long time partner/reseller of the popular Intel NUC platform for quite some time but over the past few years, they have expanded their portfolio to include additional 4x4 systems that are completely designed in-house by SimplyNUC include Topaz, Ruby, Cypress and Chapel Rock to just name a few.


Moonstone is the latest 4x4 addition from SimplyNUC, which is an AMD-based kit that includes support for the latest AMD Zen 4 (Phoenix) and Zen 3+ (Rembrandt R) processors. The VMware Community has always been interested in an AMD-based kit but typically they do not work well due to the presence of a Realtek-based network adaptor, where drivers from Realtek does not exists for ESXi.

The first thing that caught my attention when I first heard about Moonstone was that this was an AMD kit that features an Intel-based network adapter as its primary network interface! ?

This definitely took me by surprise, not sure if AMD was making any statements about their networking choices or simply diversifying their networking options? ? Either way, I was not complaining and I thought this might be the first real viable AMD 4x4 candidate, from a VMware perspective, in quite some time.


Thanks to the SimplyNUC team, I did not have to wonder much more and I got the opportunity to put the Moonstone through its paces and see what it can do for the VMware Community!

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ESXi on Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny

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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.
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ESXi on SolidRun V3000

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The name SolidRun is no stranger to the VMware ecosystem, both the Honeycomb LX2 and MacchiatoBin are two popular Arm platforms that are used with the ESXi-Arm Fling, especially for development and testing purposes.

However, what I did not know about SolidRun was that they also catered to the x86 market, which I recently came to learn about with their launch of the Bedrock V3000 (AMD Zen 3) and V7000 (AMD Zen 4) platforms respectively.

Given the opportunity to get hands on with one of the SolidRun x86 kits, the V3000, I knew I had to take it for a spin!


After unboxing the V3000, the first thing that immediately stands out is the overall build quality and aesthetics. The system is truly beautiful to look at and hold, not words I typically use to describe a server 🙂 The V3000 is not for a typical homelab, it is designed to run in harsh and demanding industrial type environments, especially those found at the Edge.

The unique fanless design and cooling of the V3000 enables it to be deployed to a number of locations, including ruggedized environments where traditional mounting kits may not be available and the use of DIN-Rail are required. Another thing that stood out to me while reading about the V3000, is the modularity of their platform where you can easily add a Networking and I/O board (NIO), Storage and Extension Cards board (SX) and Power Module (PM) to address your different use cases and requirements.

Lets now take a closer look at running ESXi on the V3000!

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