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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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VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 running on Intel NUC

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Interested in trying out the latest release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.0? Don't have some beefy hardware to meet all the requirements, not to worry! Did you know you can actually deploy a VCF Management Domain using just a single Intel NUC or simliar small form factor system? This is exactly how I kicked the tires with the latest VCF 5.0 release 😎


Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk.

Requirements:

  • VMware Cloud Builder 5.0 OVA (Build 21822418)
  • VCF 5.0 Licenses
  • Intel NUC configured with
    • 64GB of memory or more
    • Dual onboard networking ("Tall" NUC like Intel NUC 11 Pro, which is what I used) OR add additional NICs with these Thunderbolt 3 Networking options (no USB NIC)
    • 2 x SSD that are empty for use for vSAN bootstrap (500GB+ for capacity)
  • ESXi 8.0 Update 1a installed on the Intel NUC using USB device
  • Ability to deploy and run the VMware Cloud Builder (CB) Appliance in a separate environment (ESXi/Fusion/Workstation)

Note: While my experiment used an Intel NUC, any system that meets the basic requirements above should also work.

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ESXi on ASUS PN64-E1

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There are not many small form factor kits out there right now that supports Thunderbolt 4, so I was really interested in what ASUS had to offer with their release of the PN64-E1.


I have actually never worked with an ASUS kit before, so I was definitely looking forward to getting my hands on one of this system and see what capabilities it can enable for the VMware community. I initially learned about this platform last year with their PN64, but in speaking with ASUS, they mentioned I should really check out their newest offering, the PN64-E1, which has several new enhancements over their previous model.

So here is your first look at the ASUS PN64-E1!

UPDATE (02/20/25) - 128GB (2x64GB) DDR5 SODIMM memory is fully functional with PN64-E1, please see this blog post for more information.

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