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Quick Tip - NVMe Tiering configured but not working?

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Since publishing my NVMe Tiering in vSphere 8.0 Update 3 is a Homelab game changer blog post, the feedback and responses have been absolutely phenomenal!

In fact, during VMware Explore, I had a number of users share with me in person that they not only updated to vSphere 8.0 Update 3 after learning about the feature but they were extremely happy that they could have their hardware was even more capable with just a software upgrade and workloads varied from general infrastructure VMs to the full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) stack.

Right before VMware Explore, I did have a couple of users who reported that after successfully configuring NVMe Tiering and rebooting their ESXi host, they noticed the memory capacity did not change. After sharing the details along with vm-support bundles, Engineering has identified the root cause.

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NVMe Tiering in vSphere 8.0 Update 3 is a Homelab game changer!

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As someone who is always on the lookout for interesting and clever ways to make the most out of your vSphere homelab investment, I was surprised there has not been more noise about the new NVMe Tiering capability in vSphere 8.0 Update 3!?

NVMe Tiering is currently in Tech Preview and it enables ESXi to use an NVMe device as a secondary tier of memory for your workloads, which IMHO makes it one of the killer features in vSphere 8.0 Update 3, especially with some interesting implications for Homelabs!

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words ...


Picture on the left shows a system with 64GB of memory (DRAM) that is available before enabling NVMe Tiering and on the right, the amount of memory that is available after enabling the NVMe Tiering which is whopping 480GB! 🤯

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Quick Tip - ESXi 8.0 Update 2b resolves not detecting Apple NVMe

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There was an issue that was reported last November where ESXi 8.0 Update 2 was not detecting the onboard Apple NVMe device during an upgrade and I am happy to share the mentioned fix will be available as part of the pending release of ESXi 8.0 Update 2b release, which is schedule for today (02/29/24)!


When you boot into the ESXi 8.0 Update 2b installer, you should now see the Apple NVMe device, which may also contain your ESXi installation and you will be able to select it and upgrade!


Disclaimer: Support for ESXi on Apple Hardware (Mac Pro and Mac Mini) has officially concluded with ESXi 7.x, so this is purely for informational and/or for homelab use purposes.