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Intel NUC 9 Pro & Extreme - First "Modular" NUC

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The highly anticipated "modular" Next Unit of Computing (NUC) has just been announced at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) this week, dubbed the Intel NUC 9 Pro (codename Quartz Canyon) and NUC 9 Extreme (codename Ghost Canyon). Boy am I super excited for this new platform and what it could mean for the VMware Community! 😍

Immediately off the bat, you can see that this is not your typical NUC "cube" form factor. Intel has completely redesigned the system from the inside and out, more on this in a bit. The key difference between the two NUC 9 variants (Pro and Extreme) are the CPU options, which are detailed below. For the remainder of this article, I will be focusing on the Pro version of the NUC 9 and I will call out any differences where applicable.

The use of the word "Pro" is also quite fitting as Intel is positioning this system as a high-end prosumer to Mid-Enterprise device compared to the traditional NUC. The NUC 9 Pro is targeting more demanding workloads such as Digital Content Creation, CAD/Manufacturing and Financial Service applications that either require a high-end graphics card or AI module for computing. When I first heard about this system from Intel, it conceptually reminded me of Apple's recent 2019 Mac Pro, which is also designed with modularity in mind and can cater to a variety of use cases.

Speaking of use cases, although Virtualization is not a target use case for this new platform, VMware customers have been taking advantage of the Intel NUCs for a number of years now and it is still by far the most popular platform for running a vSphere/vSAN/NSX Home Lab. However, one common complaint I often hear about the current generations of NUCs has been its CPU and I think the new NUC 9 Pro/Extreme will be a nice contender for current alternatives like the popular Supermicro E200-8D. Thanks to Intel, I was able to get my hands on a pre-production NUC 9 Pro unit for testing, so lets take a closer look at what this new platform has to offer!

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Running Nested ESXi, NSX-V or NSX-T on top of NSX-T

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Nested Virtualization is an extremely useful tool that helps customers easily test and try out new VMware products and solutions before rolling that into a proper development environment for further validation. This is especially handy for those wanting to setup an NSX-based environment and simulating their actual deployment topology, configuration and upgrade workflows.

In this past year, I have seen a 10x increase in the number of NSX-T based questions that have come up from customers and our field, the adoption of NSX-T is definitely in full swing. As expected, questions about running Nested ESXi on top of a physical NSX-T deployment has come up and there has actually been several variations that have been asked about whether that is Nested ESXi using VSS, VDS, NSX-V or even NSX-T running on top of an N-VDS, which is the virtual switch that NSX-T uses.

Luckily all of these combinations work and just require some basic configuration changes within NSX-T. However, before I continue, let me remind folks again that VMware does NOT officially support Nested Virtualization.

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Hands on with new AMD "NUC" platform from ASRock 

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It has been rumored for some time now that AMD would be re-entering the embedded/small form factor (SFF) market and with their latest generation of Ryzen CPUs, timing could not be more perfect. With the rise of Edge and IoT workloads, new constraints like cost, footprint, low to no tech-touch and power consumption is now top of mind more than ever for customers.

At VMware, we certainly see interests from customers across this spectrum whether it is a traditional "ROBO" environment running a handful of Virtual Machines for a supermarket or retail chain to an industrial site such as an oil rig or factory to mobile infrastructure like a car, ship or even a submarine. On top of these use cases, personal and development labs continue to be extremely popular amongst our customer base for learning and training purposes.

Today, the Intel NUC is still by far the most popular platform due to its size, portability, cost and low power consumption for running VMware vSphere, vSAN & NSX. The idea of an AMD "NUC" kit which includes a chassis, motherboard and CPU is something that that many folks have been asking for. With the market mostly dominated by Intel, I certainly welcome AMD re-entering this market as this will certainly drive new solutions and innovations in this market. With that said, AMD has re-entered into this market and this is initially through partnerships with several OEMs/manufacturers.


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