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Sonnet Solo5G Multi-Gig (1G/2.5G/5G) USB Adapter works with ESXi

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Last week I caught this tweet from Blake Garner who is an active VMware Community member that I follow and I came to learn that Sonnet just launched their first Multi-Gigabit (1GbE, 2.5GbE & 5GbE) USB Network Adapter called the Solo5G.

This of course piqued my interest for VMware Homelabs as last year we had just enabled the first Multi-Gigabit USB Network Adapter from QNAP supporting ESXi using the popular USB Native Driver Fling for ESXi. The QNAP device uses an Aquantia chipset and I had a funny suspicion that the Sonnet device might be using either the exact same or simliar chipset.

To confirm my theory, I reached out to the folks over at Sonnet and they were kind enough to send me a unit for validation which just arrived earlier this week. I had an Intel NUC 10 (Frost Canyon) already running and I just plugged it in and to my surprise it worked immediately since it already had the USB Native Driver Fling installed.


So there you have it, same chipset as the QNAP and best of all this device is only $79.99 USD which be purchased directly from Sonnet here. As of writing this blog post, the Solo5G is much cheaper than the QNAP. In fact, it seems the price of the QNAP has significantly increased since I had first blogged about it. I think multi-gig NICs both USB-based but also PCIe and respective switches is starting to become more mainstream, at least in the consumer markets and this is certainly an easy way to add additional bandwidth without breaking the bank. Big thanks to the folks at Sonnet and Blake for sharing the news!

New Thunderbolt 3 to 10GbE options for ESXi

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With the help from Aquantia, we now have an ESXi driver to enable the built-in 10GbE adaptor for both the Apple 2018 Mac Mini and the iMac Pro. Although this was exciting news for our VMware/Apple customers, I was actually more excited for what this development meant for the larger VMware Community when it comes to 10GbE accessibility.

Many Enterprise customers have already been using Thunderbolt 2/3 to access their 10 Gigabit infrastructure, usually over SFP+ but Ethernet based options also exists such as the Sonnet solution which I had shared last year. This is especially common for VMware customers who virtualize Apple MacOS on vSphere for MacOS/iOS development and the use of Thunderbolt enables ESXi to connect to the underlying storage and networking infrastructure, which traditionally has been either Fibre Channel and/or IP-based storage running over a 10Gig link.

When you start looking at 10GbE accessibility for VMware home labs which could potentially apply to remote office/branch office (ROBO) and Edge/IoT environments, the cost and the complexity of the setup is something that many folks have to consider. There are definitely some creative options out there, most recently Chad Moon shared his solution using a Thunderbolt 3 to PCIe expansion chassis with his Intel NUCs which will run you about $230 per setup or you can be a true hardware hacker like Jack Harvest and use one of the M.2 slots in the Intel Skull Canyon NUC and connect that to PCIe 10GbE SFP+ card with a custom 3D printed chassis to hide everything for just $43.68 🙂

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Thunderbolt to 10GbE Network Adapters for ESXi

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I was recently made aware of this article in which the author, Karim Elatov, had successfully demonstrated the use of a Sonnett Thunderbolt 2 to 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter with ESXi running on an Apple Mac Mini. As far as I am aware of, this may be the first public confirmation that such a device would work with ESXi, not to mention having it functional on the Mac Mini. I know in past years, there have been unconfirmed reports on various forums mentioning a Thunderbolt to 10GbE solution that works with ESXi but it was unclear on whether custom drivers were needed or if it would even work with newer versions of ESXi.


This topic has been popular amongst our customers who virtualize Apple MacOS on vSphere. In fact, several years back I had written an article on Thunderbolt Storage for ESXi, which includes a number of solutions that our customers have implemented to provide remote storage for their vSphere infrastructure running on either an Apple XServe, Mac Pro or Mac Mini. Questions around a functional Thunderbolt to 10GbE has definitely been asked about, but I had never heard from any customer who have had a successful story to share, at least until now.

From Karim's post, it looks like he was able to get this working using ESXi 6.0 but it was unclear if there was anything he needed to do to get the device recognized. I reached out to Karim and he was able to confirm that the Thunderbolt device was recognized by ESXi without any additional driver installation. In fact, if you look at this console output on his blog, you will see that it simply uses the inbox Intel ixgbe driver. I had also asked if Karim tried this with the latest version of ESXi, which is currently at 6.5 Update 1. Karim was kind enough to perform one additional test for me which was to confirm the device would still work with the latest ESXi release, which you can see for yourself in the screenshot below.

UPDATE (02/04/19) - Chad Moon recently shared his experiences on getting 10GbE support with an Intel NUC using the OWC Mercury Helios 3, Thunderbolt3 to PCIe expansion enclosure

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