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ESXi on Protectli Vault Pro 6650/6670

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I always love hearing about new and interesting hardware vendors from our VMware community, which is exactly how I came to learn about Protectli back in 2021 from fellow vExpert Trevor Smith. It was in 2021 where Trevor had shared with the vExpert Community that Protectli was developing a 10GbE hardware kit, which was really interesting since there was not many options for small form factor systems at that time that included 10GbE connectivity.

After following up with Protectcli in 2021, they confirmed a 10GbE kit was in the works but it was still in early design and development, so there was nothing to evaluate at the time. Fast forward to April 2024, I received a follow-up email asking if I would be interested in kicking the tires on their first 10GbE kits with their new Protectli Vault Pro 6600 series.


So here is your first look at the ESXi running on the new Protectli 10G Vault Pro!

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ESXi on Minisforum MS-01

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In recent years, there have been a number of new players that have entered the mini PC market that have really been pushing the boundaries on small form factor systems. Minisforum is one such company, that was founded in 2018 and have been steadily producing more interesting kits to compete with some of the more established vendors in this space.

Early on, the kits from Minisforum were pretty comparable (compute, network and storage capabilities) with other vendors using the popular 4x4 design, pioneered by Intel with their Intel NUC platform. With each new generation of mini PCs from Minisforum, the chassis aesthetics started to become more unique and they started to have more differentiated offerings like broader CPU choices including some of the latest AMD desktop and mobile processors.

Even I was intrigued by some of Minisforum offers from a VMware perspective, but unfortunately Minisforum had no interest in collaborating when I had reached out a while back. Over the years, I stayed informed of new releases from Minisforum but nothing really stood out to me as much as their recent announcement of the Minisforums Workstation MS-01.


UPDATE (03/05/2024) - SimplyNUC has just launched the Onyx Pro, which is simply a rebrand of the Minisforums MS-01 and the review here also applies to the SimplyNUC Onyx Pro.

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ESXi on Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra

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After getting hands on with the Lenovo P3 Tiny, which was my first time experiencing a Lenovo kit, I was recommended by the Lenovo team to also check out its larger and more powerful sibling the Lenovo P3 Ultra.


While many of the smaller form factor systems have gotten more capable over the years, especially the classic 4x4 kits, they do have their limits in terms resources and expandability.

It has been some time since I have looked at larger kits but after glancing at the P3 Ultra specs, I can see why the Lenovo team thought this might be of interests to the VMware Community, especially with all the additional capabilities, packed into a larger but still pretty compact form factor design.

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