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How to Netboot install ESXi onto Apple Mac Hardware?

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The ability to perform an ESXi Scripted Installation over the network has been a basic capability for non-Apple hardware customers since the initial release of classic ESX. However, for customers who run ESXi on Apple Mac Hardware (first introduced in vSphere 5.0), being able to remotely boot and install ESXi over the network has not been possible and customers could only dream of this capability which many of us have probably taken for granted.

Unlike traditional scripted network installations which commonly uses Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE), Apple Mac Hardware actually uses its own developed Boot Service Discover Protocol (BSDP) which ESXi and other OSses do not support. In addition, there are very few DHCP servers that even support BSDP (at least this may have been true 4 years ago when I had initially inquired about this topic). It was expected that if you were going to Netboot (equivalent of PXE/Kickstart in the Apple world) a server that you would be running a Mac OS X system. Even if you had set this up, a Netboot installation was wildly different from a traditional PXE installation and it would be pretty difficult to near impossible to get it working with an ESXi image. With no real viable solution over the years, it was believed that a Netboot installation of ESXi onto Mac Hardware just may not be possible.

tl;dr - If you are interested in the background to the eventual solution, continue reading. If not and you just want the goods, jump down a bit further. Though, I do think it is pretty interesting and worth getting the full context 🙂

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Remotely query an ESXi host without adding it to vCenter Server

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I was browsing through the vSphere API Reference the other day and I came across an interesting vSphere API called QueryConnectionInfoViaSpec() which was introduced in vSphere 6.0. This new API is similiar to the existing QueryConnectionInfo() method which also allows you to remotely query an ESXi host without requiring you to add it to your vCenter Server Inventory, which I did not know about before. Some of the information that you can retrieve is whether it is currently being managed by an existing vCenter Server and if so, what is its IP Address, any registered Virtual Machines, networks and datastores that may be configured along with underlying host capabilities.

The main difference between this new API is that instead of accepting a list of arguments to the method, it accepts a HostConnectSpec. It is a minor difference, but what this allows you to do is to be able to re-use that exact same spec in the AddHost_Task() API if you determine that you would like to add the ESXi host to your vCenter Server Inventory after inspecting the remote ESXi host. I think this is a useful API if you want to validate that you are not stealing an ESXi host from another managed vCenter Server and if you are, at least you know which vCenter Server it was being managed by. To demonstrate this vSphere API, I have created a simple PowerCLI script called Get-RemoteESXi.ps1 which requires a vCenter Server login as well as the Hostname/IP Address and credentials of the remote ESXi host you wish to query.

Here is an example output of running the script which stores the returned output to the $results variable.

query-remote-esxi-without-adding-to-vcenter-server
If you want to check whether the ESXi host is being managed by an existing vCenter Server, you can check the following property which will hold the IP Address of the vCenter Server if it is currently being managed:

$result.Host.ManagementServerIp

If you want to check if there are running VMs already on the ESXi host, you can check the following property:

$result.vm

As mentioned earlier, there is a ton of other information returned from the remote ESXi host and I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to explore further.

Functional USB 3.0 Ethernet Adapter (NIC) driver for ESXi 5.5 & 6.0

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Earlier this month I wrote an article demonstrating a functional USB ethernet adapter for ESXi 5.1. This was made possible by using a custom built driver for ESXi that was created over three years ago by a user named Trickstarter. After having re-discovered the thread several years later, I had tried reaching out to the user but concluded that he/she has probably moved on given the lack of forum activity in the recent years. Over the last few weeks I have been investigating to see if it was possible to compile a new version of the driver that would function with newer versions of ESXi such as our 5.5 and 6.0 release.

UPDATE (02/12/19) - A new VMware Native Driver for USB-based NICs has just been released for ESXi 6.5/6.7, please use this driver going forward. If you are still on ESXi 5.5/6.0, you can continue using the existing driver but please note there will be no additional development in the existing vmklinux-based driver.

UPDATE (01/22/17) - For details on using a USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 Ethernet Adapter, please see this post here.

UPDATE (11/17/16) - New driver has been updated for ESXi 6.5, please find the details here.

After reaching out to a few folks internally, I was introduced to Songtao Zheng, a VMware Engineer who works on some of our USB code base. Songtao was kind enough to provide some of assistance in his spare time to help with this non-sanction effort that I was embarking on. Today, I am please to announce that we now have a functional USB ethernet adapter driver based on the ASIX AX88179 that works for both ESXi 5.5 and 6.0. This effort could not have been possible without Songtao and I just want to say thank you very much for all of your help and contributions. I think it is safe to say that the overall VMware community also thanks you for your efforts. This new capability will definitely enable new use cases for vSphere home labs that were never possible before when using platforms such as the Intel NUC or Apple Mac Mini for example. Thank you Songtao! I would also like to extend an additional thank you to Jose Gomes, one of my readers, who has also been extremely helpful with his feedback as well as assistance on testing the new drivers.

Now, Before jumping into the goods, I do want to mention there are a few caveats to be aware of and that I think it is important to understand them before making any purchasing decisions.

  • First and foremost, this is NOT officially supported by VMware, use at your own risk.
  • Secondly, we have observed there is a substantial difference in transfer speeds between Transmit (Egress) and Receive (Ingress) traffic which may or may not be acceptable depending on your workload. On Receive, the USB network adapter is performing close to a native gigabit interface. However, on Transmit, the bandwidth mysteriously drops by ~50% which includes very inconsistent transfer speeds. We are not exactly sure why this is the case, but given ESXi does not officially support USB based ethernet adapters, it is possible that the underlying infrastructure was never optimized for such devices. YMMV
  • Lastly, for the USB ethernet adapter to properly function, you will need a system that supports USB 3.0 which kind of makes sense for this type of a solution to be beneficial in the home lab. If you have a system with USB 2.0, the device will probably not work at least from testing that we have done.

Note: For those interested in the required source code changes to build the AX88179 driver, I have published all of the details on my Github repo here.

Disclaimer: In case you some how missed it, this is not officially supported by VMware. Use at your own risk.

Without further ado, here are the USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapters that are supported with the two drivers:

Note: There may be other USB ethernet adapters that uses the same chipset which could also leverage this driver but these are the only two that have been verified.

usbnic
Here are the ESXi driver VIB downloads:

Note: Although the drivers were compiled against a specific version of ESXi, they should also work on the same major version of ESXi, but I have not done that level of testing and YMMV.

Verify USB 3.0 Support

As mentioned earlier, you will need a system that is USB 3.0 capable to be able to use the USB ethernet adapter. If you are unsure, you can plug in a USB 3.0 device and run the following command to check:

lsusb

usb3nic-0
What you will be looking for is an entry stating "Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub" which shows that ESXi was able to detect a USB 3.0 port on your system. Secondly, look for the USB device you just plugged in and ensure the "Bus" ID matches that of the USB 3.0 bus. This will tell you if your device is being claimed as a USB 3.0 device. If not, you may need to update your BIOS as some systems may have USB 2.0 enabled by default like earlier versions of Intel NUC as desribed here. You may also be running pre-ESXi 5.5 which did not support USB 3.0 as mentioned here, so you may need to upgrade your ESXi host to at least 5.5 or greater.

Install Driver

You can either install the VIB directly onto your ESXi host or by creating a custom ESXi ISO that includes the driver using a popular tool like ESXi Customizer by Andreas Peetz.

To install the VIB, upload the VIB to your ESXi host and then run the following ESXCLI command specifying the full path to the VIB:

esxcli software vib install -v /vghetto-ax88179-esxi60u2.vib -f

usb3nic-1
Lastly, you will need to disable the USB native driver to be able to use this driver. To do so, run the following command:

esxcli system module set -m=vmkusb -e=FALSE

You will need to reboot for the change to go into effect.

To verify that the USB network adapter has been successfully claimed, run either of the following commands to list your physical NICs:

esxcli network nic list
esxcfg-nics -l

usb3nic-2
To add the USB uplink, you will need to either use the vSphere Web Client or ESXCLI to add the uplink to either a Virtual or Distributed Virtual Switch.

usb3nic-3
To do so using ESXCLI, run the following command and specify the name of your vSwitch:

esxcli network vswitch standard uplink add -u vusb0 -v vSwitch0

Uninstall Driver

To uninstall the VIB, first make sure to completely unplug the USB network adapter from the ESXi first. Next, run the following ESXCLI command which will automatically unload the driver and remove the VIB from your ESXi host:

esxcli software vib remove -n vghetto-ax88179-esxi60u2

Note: If you try to remove the VIB while the USB network adapter is still plugged in, you may hang the system or cause a PSOD. Simply reboot the system if you accidentally get into this situation.

Troubleshooting

If you are not receiving link on the USB ethernet adapter, it is most likely that your system does not support USB 3.0. If you find the a similar message like the one below in /var/log/vmkernel.log then you are probably running USB 1.0 or 2.0.

2016-03-21T23:30:49.195Z cpu6:33307)WARNING: LinDMA: Linux_DMACheckConstraints:138: Cannot map machine address = 0x10f5b6b44, length = 2 for device 0000:00:1d.7; reason = address exceeds dma_mask (0xffffffff))

Persisting USB NIC Configurations after reboot

ESXi does not natively support USB NIC and upon a reboot, the USB NICs are not picked up until much later in the boot process which prevents them from being associated with VSS/VDS and their respective portgroups. To ensure things are connected properly after a reboot, you will need to add something like the following in /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh which re-links the USB NIC along with the individual portgroups as shown in the example below.

esxcfg-vswitch -L vusb0 vSwitch0
esxcfg-vswitch -M vusb0 -p "Management Network" vSwitch0
esxcfg-vswitch -M vusb0 -p "VM Network" vSwitch0

You will also need to run /sbin/auto-backup.sh to ensure the configuration changes are saved and then you can issue a reboot to verify that everything is working as expected.

Summary

For platforms that have limited built-in networking capabilities such as the Intel NUC and Apple Mac Mini, customers now have the ability to add additional network interfaces to these systems. This will now open up a whole new class of use cases for vSphere based home labs that were never possible before, especially with solutions such as VSAN and NSX. I look forward to seeing what our customers can now do with these new networking capabilities.

Additional Info

Here are some additional screenshots testing the dual USB 3.0 ethernet adapter as well as a basic iPerf benchmark for the single USB ethernet adapter. I was not really impressed with the speeds for the dual ethernet adapter which I had shared some more info here. Unless you are limited on number of USB 3.0 ports, I would probably recommend just sticking with the single port ethernet adapter.

usb3nic-5
usb3nic-6

iPerf benchmark for Ingress traffic (single port USB ethernet adapter):
usb3nic-7
iPerf benchmark for Egress traffic (single port USB ethernet adapter):
usb3nic-8