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First look at the Supermicro E100-12T

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I first came to learn about Supermicro's E100-9W platform last year, which I had first written about here. The E100-9W is a fanless kit that is part of Supermicro's Embedded IoT family and targets similiar use cases to the Intel NUC such as Industrial Automation, Retail, Smart Medical Systems, Kiosks and Digital Signage. Although the E100-9W was just released in 2020, it was actually using a much older Intel 8th Generation CPU due to some constraints with Intel's embedded CPU roadmap.

Supermicro did mention last year that a Tiger Lake-based model was in the works and last week, I just got my hands on a pre-production unit for their 2nd generation of this platform called the E100-12T.

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Considerations for future vSphere Homelabs due to upcoming removal of SD card/USB support for ESXi

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In case you have not heard the news, VMware had recently published a new knowledge base article (KB 85685) outlining details for the future removal of SD card/USB as a standalone boot device for ESXi.

If you have not read the KB, please take a few minutes and carefully read the article, especially as you think about future hardware upgrades and purchases.

There has certainly been no shortage of discussions and debates since the publishing of the VMware KB. One topic that I know many of you have been wondering and asking about is what is the impact to vSphere Homelabs? This was something that had already crossed my mind after I first read the KB and I was thinking about this a bit more this week and specifically some of the potential options that are available to customers right now but also some of the considerations you may want to account for in with future homelab upgrades.

Disclaimer: These are my own personal opinions and do not reflect any official guidance or recommendations from VMware.

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ESXi on Intel NUC 11 Extreme (Beast Canyon)

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The NUC 11 Extreme (codenamed Beast Canyon) is the latest in Intel's Tiger Lake based NUC lineup which includes the NUC 11 Performance (Panther Canyon), NUC 11 Enthusiast (Phantom Canyon) and NUC 11 Pro (Tiger Canyon). As you can see from the picture above, the codename for the NUC 11 Extreme is quite fitting as this is currently the largest "NUC" that Intel has built to date, coming in at 8L. Yes, this is definitely "stretching" the NUC label in terms of what folks historically expect but I believe Intel is simply expanding on their well known NUC brand, especially as there are also NUC laptops.

However, this is also not the first time Intel has explored a larger NUC design. In 2020, Intel introduced the NUC 9 Pro (Quartz Canyon) and Extreme (Ghost Canyon) which took advantage of the new NUC Compute Element and enabled a new modular design and form factor adding support for discrete GPU and PCIe expandability. As a successor to the NUC 9, the NUC 11 Extreme extends this concept further by adding support for a full length discrete GPU, which is the primary driver for the larger form factor.

The NUC 11 Extreme can also enhance your homelab experience with LED lights which are located underneath the chassis and on the front with the classic Intel NUC Skull. Even cooler, the design in the front is customizable and can be user replaced with a different graphic. For an example of what this could look like, jump down to the customizable logo section of this blog post 🙂

I know there are a number of folks in the VMware community who are currently using the NUC 9 for their VMware Homelab, especially for those with GPU and/or additional network and storage requirements. Let's now take a closer look at what the NUC 11 Extreme has to offer the VMware Community.

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