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ESXi on Intel NUC 13 Pro (Arena Canyon)

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A new year means a new Intel NUC with the latest generation of processors from Intel.


Today, Intel has launched the new Intel NUC 13 Pro, previously codenamed Arena Canyon NUC, which incorporates the latest Intel 13th Generation Raptor Lake CPU mobile processors and delivering that in the classic 4x4 Intel NUC form factor that many in the VMware community are quite familiar with.

At first glance, the Intel NUC 13 Pro looks exactly the same as the previous Intel NUC 12 Pro generation. In fact, the only visible difference on the outside between the 12th and 13th Generation Intel NUC Pro is that the Intel NUC 13 now has a new etched Intel NUC logo that is located on the top of the case on the lower left as shown in the screenshot above. Obviously, the changes with the Intel NUC 13 Pro is from within, so lets now take a closer look at the newest Intel NUC Pro and what it has to offer from a VMware Homelab perspective.

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Interesting VMware Homelab Kits for 2023

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Similiar to my post last year on interesting VMware Homelab Kits for 2022, I figured it was time to put together the 2023 edition, especially with some of the kits that I have come to learn about or ones that are planned for release later this year.

The list below is not an exhaustive by any means, but I did try to look for unique kits that folks may not be aware of and/or that include interesting capabilities or designs that would support VMware ESXi without issues and be able to run various other VMware products on top like vSAN, NSX, Aria and Tanzu.

While pricing is just one of the many factors in the hardware decision process, I did limit the scope to the base kit costing sub-$2,000 USD. I also wanted to make sure that the latest ESXi releases will install and run without any issues, which is typically governed by the model of the onboard network adapter. Therefore, any system that requires an additional USB network adapter to install ESXi is automatically excluded from the list. The size and form factor is also just as important and most of the kits below take up very little space or can easily be mobile, if needed.

If there are other new kits that have been released or planned for 2023 that you feel should make the list, be sure to leave a comment below.

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ESXi on Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast (Serpent Canyon)

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The Intel NUC Enthusiast product line is typically geared towards content creators and gamers. These Intel NUCs, include Skull Canyon, Hades Canyon and Phantom Canyon, are all equipped with an onboard discrete GPU.


The Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast, codenamed Serpent Canyon, is the latest offering in this product line and it is also the first Intel NUC that includes both an Intel CPU and an Intel GPU, which is based on the latest Intel Arc graphics.

Within the VMware Community, both the Skull Canyon and Hades Canyon were extremely popular due to the additional graphics and storage capabilities at the time. With my recent updated findings on iGPU passthrough for recent Intel NUCs with ESXi and the combined compute and graphics solution from this latest offering from Intel, Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast can make for a pretty powerful and capable VMware setup!

Let's take a closer look at the new Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast from a VMware point of view!

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