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ESXi on GMKtec NucBox K11

03.20.2025 by William Lam // 7 Comments

The GMKtec NucBox has been growing in popularity amongst the VMware community as a modern AMD Ryzen-based alternative to the Intel/ASUS NUC, offering many of the same advantages while avoiding some of the drawbacks of Intel's Hybrid CPU architecture.

In preparation for my upcoming session at the inaugural VMUG Connect Conference in April, I have been experimenting with several modern hardware options, with the goal of deploying the full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) solution for use within a lab environment, while still staying budget friendly!

I know several folks have had great success with the GMKtec NucBox K8 Plus and it just so happens, while browsing the GMKtec website, I noticed an additional NucBox has just been released called the K11.


While the differences between the K8 Plus and K11 is pretty minimal, I was interested in validating some new hardware add-ons, so getting the latest hardware would hopefully give me the best chance!

In collaboration with the VMware {Code} team, I was able to get hands on with the latest GMKtec NucBox K11!

UPDATE (06/25/25) - The K11 can be used to run VCF 9.0, but you will NOT be able to run VCF Automation (VCFA). You can see how I have used the K11 is used in a "Hybrid" configuration in this blog post under Scenario 3.

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, Home Lab, VMware Cloud Foundation Tags // GMKtec, VCF 9.0, VMware Cloud Foundation

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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