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Heads Up - ESXi 8.0 Update 2 requires XSAVE CPU instruction even with allowLegacyCPU=true

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As shared back in 2022 in my Homelab Considerations for vSphere 8.x blog post, if you attempt to install ESXi on system where the CPU is no longer being supported by the OEM vendor, who then informs VMware on what to publish on the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guide (VCG), you will see the following error message preventing you from proceeding.


Also mentioned in that article, you can override this default behavior with the following ESXi boot option: allowLegacyCPU=true which would convert this from an error to warning message but allowing you to proceed in an installation or upgrade.

Obviously, this is not officially supported by VMware and its behavior was never guarantee but it certainly was a nice gesture, in my humble opinion from Engineering, as they could have easily not allowed any override based on on our official VCG. For homelab use cases, it might be okay to use a CPU that is 5 to 6 years old, knowing that it should be replaced hopefully in the near future.

I just had a couple of users report issues while upgrading to the latest ESXi 8.0 Update 2 release when using the allowLegacyCPU boot option and saw the following error message

VMB: 716: Unsupported CPU


The ESXi installer immediately halts and prevents the upgrade from proceeding ...

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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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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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