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ESXi support for Intel iGPU with SR-IOV

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Support for Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) was first introduced back in 2012 with the release of vSphere 5.1 and enables for a physical PCIe device to be shared amongst a number of Virtual Machines. The networking industry was the first to take advantage of the SR-IOV technology and could be used to help reduce latencies and improve overall CPU efficiencies for vSphere-based workloads that were network intensive.

Since SR-IOV is an extension of the PCIe specification, it can also be used benefit other non-networking devices. In 2016, AMD introduced their MxGPU technology which added SR-IOV capabilities to their GPUs which was then used to power VMware Horizon workloads, but this functionality was only available during the vSphere 6.0 and 6.5 release.

GPU sharing these days are synonymous to one vendor, NVIDIA. In 2015, VMware and NVIDIA teamed up to accelerate Enterprise desktop workloads through the integration of NVIDIA's vGPU (formally GRID) technology with the release of both VMware Horizon View and vSphere 6.0.

NVIDIA continues to dominate the GPU market in 2023, however another vendor has re-entered the market with an interesting solution that is enabled by the latest vSphere 8.0 Update 2 release ...

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Community Networking Driver for ESXi Fling v1.2.2

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The Community Networking Driver for ESXi Fling v1.2.2 has just been released and is a minor update which enables a number of new Intel I220/I221/I225/I226 devices:

  • 8086:0d9f Ethernet Controller I225-IT(2)
  • 8086:15f8 Ethernet Controller I225-I
  • 8086:3100 Ethernet Controller I225-K
  • 8086:3101 Ethernet Controller I225-K(2)
  • 8086:5502 Ethernet Controller I225-LMvP(2)
  • 8086:5504 Ethernet Controller I226-K
  • 8086:125b Ethernet Controller I226-LM
  • 8086:125c Ethernet Controller I226-V
  • 8086:125d Ethernet Controller I226-IT
  • 8086:15f7 Ethernet Controller I220-V
  • 8086:125e Ethernet Controller I221-V

Intel NUC 9 Pro & Extreme - First "Modular" NUC

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The highly anticipated "modular" Next Unit of Computing (NUC) has just been announced at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) this week, dubbed the Intel NUC 9 Pro (codename Quartz Canyon) and NUC 9 Extreme (codename Ghost Canyon). Boy am I super excited for this new platform and what it could mean for the VMware Community! 😍

Immediately off the bat, you can see that this is not your typical NUC "cube" form factor. Intel has completely redesigned the system from the inside and out, more on this in a bit. The key difference between the two NUC 9 variants (Pro and Extreme) are the CPU options, which are detailed below. For the remainder of this article, I will be focusing on the Pro version of the NUC 9 and I will call out any differences where applicable.

The use of the word "Pro" is also quite fitting as Intel is positioning this system as a high-end prosumer to Mid-Enterprise device compared to the traditional NUC. The NUC 9 Pro is targeting more demanding workloads such as Digital Content Creation, CAD/Manufacturing and Financial Service applications that either require a high-end graphics card or AI module for computing. When I first heard about this system from Intel, it conceptually reminded me of Apple's recent 2019 Mac Pro, which is also designed with modularity in mind and can cater to a variety of use cases.

Speaking of use cases, although Virtualization is not a target use case for this new platform, VMware customers have been taking advantage of the Intel NUCs for a number of years now and it is still by far the most popular platform for running a vSphere/vSAN/NSX Home Lab. However, one common complaint I often hear about the current generations of NUCs has been its CPU and I think the new NUC 9 Pro/Extreme will be a nice contender for current alternatives like the popular Supermicro E200-8D. Thanks to Intel, I was able to get my hands on a pre-production NUC 9 Pro unit for testing, so lets take a closer look at what this new platform has to offer!

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