Search Results for: NUC

How to recover ESXi installed on USB device after disabling vmkusb module?

01.12.2023 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

I have to say, this is one of the more interesting challenges that I have come across in quite some time. A user was looking for assistance after they accidentally disabled the vmkusb module, which is the USB driver for ESXi and allows it to communicate with USB devices that are connected to the system.

The vmkusb module also plays a very critical role if you have ESXi installed on a USB device, as the driver is required for proper functionality such as being able to save the ESXi state and configurations to the USB device. So what happens when you disable the vmkusb module and you reboot the ESXi host, which is also installed on a USB device?

Well, everything continues to work including VMs since ESXi by design runs in memory after the initial boot from the USB device. However, any configuration changes made after that is lost after a system reboot including the attempt to re-enable the vmkusb module since ESXi is unable save any of the settings to the USB device. Fortunately, I was able to help the user out as I had a few ideas on how we could fully recover from this type of scenario and hence the blog post.

Hopefully a lesson can be learned here, do not make changes or disable things that you are not familiar with 🙂

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Video of ESXi install workaround for Fatal CPU mismatch on feature for Intel 12th Gen CPUs and newer

01.09.2023 by William Lam // 52 Comments

I have been noticing more and more users that have acquired hardware that includes the latest Intel 12th Generation CPU (Alder Lake) and even the newest Intel 13th Generation CPU (Raptor Lake) for use with ESXi. Starting with the Intel 12th Generation CPU, Intel has introduced a new hybrid "big.LITTLE" CPU architecture that integrates two types of CPU cores: Performance-cores (P-cores) and Efficiency-cores (E-cores) into the same physical CPU die.

ESXi is currently not aware of this new consumer architecture and it currently expects all cores within a CPU package to have uniform characteristics. If you boot the ESXi installer, it will PSOD (Purple Screen of Death) by default and you will see a message about "Fatal CPU mismatch on feature" which is due to the different CPU properties across both the P-Cores and E-Cores. However, there is a way to workaround the issue by disabling the CPU uniformity check that ESXi performs as part of its boot up.

UPDATE (01/16/24) - See this blog post on some updated experiments using CPU affinity when both E-Cores and P-Cores are enabled when using ESXi.

UPDATE (04/22/23) - 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.

UPDATE (03/24/23) - It is possible and recommended to actually disable the E-cores within the Intel NUC BIOs following the instructions HERE to prevent ESXi from PSOD'ing due to non-uniform CPU cores rather than applying the ESXi boot option workaround as described in the video below.

I initially wrote about the solution back in Feb of 2022 where this new CPU was first introduced in the Intel NUC line with the Intel NUC 12 Extreme (Dragon Canyon) and subsequently, I had also wrote about the solution reviewing both the Intel NUC 12 Pro (Wall Street Canyon) and the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast (Serpent Canyon).

While the majority of folks have not had any issues applying the workaround, I have started seeing some folks running into challenges, perhaps its familiarity with ESXi or applying kernel options. In any case, I figured it might help to record a video demonstrating the workaround for those that rather visualize the solution along with the written instructions (included below).

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High-end Dell Precision 7770 & 7670 laptops with 128GB memory for ESXi

12.06.2022 by William Lam // 4 Comments

I have been following the progress on the new Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM), which was announced earlier this year and is a new laptop memory standard that has been created by Dell. Dell intends to replace the aging SODIMM memory module, which are typically found in laptops and small form factor systems like the popular Intel NUC.

This StorageReview article by Charles Jefferies provides a nice summary of the new CAMM technology and the benefits over the 25 year old SODIMM modules. While the CAMM technology is currently proprietary, Dell has been working with Intel on this standard and have also submitted their design to the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) for CAMM to become a new industry standard for laptop memory.

My biggest interests with CAMM is the capacity of their modules which can reach up to 128GB for a single CAMM module! For SODIMM, we have been limited to 32GB for a single module for a number of years and this will not be changing any time soon. Just imagine the popular 4x4 Intel NUC with 128GB memory! 🤤

Given CAMM was just announced earlier this year, I was not expecting to see any systems that a consumer could purchase for quite some time. I was actually pleasantly surprise to learn recently, that two new high-end Dell workstation laptops can now be purchased with CAMM memory and also configured with up to 128GB of memory. 😲

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