The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server

The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 3 (Follow Up)

January 18th, 2012 // 9:31 pm @ Paraguin

This posting will get regular updates in regards to comments and questions that occur in the previous 2 sections. If you haven’t seen the other two sections, then please follow the links below

[Update for quick links 1/30/2012]

To make linking to the other pages easier….

Overview

From the numerous comments and questions from the Installation of the blog entry, we have decided to section up each question that we can reasonably answer. Since we’re actually using these boxes on a daily use, we’re not as interested in making them dual boot or how we can make them into portable ESXi hosts when we want to. If we get more equipment in the future, we’ll try those ideas out, but for the most part we just want it to work.

As for general stability, over a 15-20 day period, everything has been stable and running 24/7 and there have been no unexpected crashes, errors, or alarms appearing via the ESXi console.

Uptime (1/18/2012)

The question of uptime, came about from Timo. From the two Mac Mini Servers that we have in use, here’s some screen shots. As you can clearly see, one of the servers has had an uptime of 15 days already while the second one which was purchased a few days later after the theory was proved, has an uptime of 9 days. (This is in reference to January 18, 2012)

Upgraded Memory (1/18/2012)

As for upgrading the memory, to fully make use of the advantages of this setup, 16 gb of most desired. Here’s a screen shot of one of the Mac Mini ESXi hosts with 16 gb of memory and the VM utilization.

Network Card (1/18/2012)

The network card responded as Gigabit and Full Duplex. We have not seen any slow file copies or VM migrations / copies from one Mac Mini to the other.

Any thing else you would like to see?

Post some comments and questions and we’ll try our best to answer them as quickly as possible.

Category : Blog

10 Comments → “The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 3 (Follow Up)”

Timo Sugliani

4 weeks ago

Many thanks,

Hmm, I’m getting very interested for a homelab with such size factor/power

Reply
Matt

4 weeks ago

Again, this is a great Proof of concept and many thanks for documenting it so well. As for something I’d like to see, do you have any iSCSI targets laying around looking to become storage for some VMs? I’m wondering how the single 1Gb/s ethernet port would/could handle the demands of iSCSI and all other network activity of Host and Guests. Second, is it possible to get the wireless adapter functioning under ESXi 5? If the wireless adapter does function you could devote the 1Gb/s ethernet to the iSCSI and route the other network traffic through the wireless. I can’t imagine the vSphere Client over wireless N speeds would be too terrible…??

Reply
- Paraguin
  
  4 weeks ago
  
  If you have any suggestions / programs for measuring I/O with a VM and iSCSI target, I’m more than willing to try to find someone with some spare SAN storage either SOHO or Enterprise who will lend me some time. As for the WiFi chipset, that’s something else we’re looking into for the long run though we’re somewhat doubtful since you’d also need a WiFi manager through the CLI. If someone has made an ESXi server with WiFi on and able to connect to an access point, then show us and we’ll work on the driver issue.
  
  Reply
Timo Sugliani

4 weeks ago

Just for my personal information : Did you also try with the normal mac mini (core i5) as I don’t need much horsepower but only memory (I’ll be having many VMs but with very little load on them, so don’t think I’ll need the extra power or Hard Drive.

Because i5 + 16GB could come up with a rather interesting entry price compared to the mac mini server ‘edition’.

Thanks in advance,

Reply
- Paraguin
  
  4 weeks ago
  
  I’m pretty confident that it’ll work. I have a Mac Mini i5 with 16 gb of ram running VMware Fusion to act as the VCenter and backup servers. Best of luck.
  
  Reply
eloscurosecreto

1 day ago

This is very interesting. Thank you for the eloquently providing this information to the world. From reading ‘Part 2′ (technical section), it seems that the HDMI and USB interfaces are fully functional. Have you tested the ThunderBolt interface? I’m interested in finding out if ESXi detects this and if it can be used for attaching storage. I’d like to take full advantage of the 1010Gbit/s.

Reply
- Paraguin
  
  1 day ago
  
  No. I believe the only thunderbolt functional storage is the one sold by Apple so you’d have to try that yourself unless someone else already purchased it and figured out if VMware added the drivers for it.
  
  Reply
LakritsTroll

1 day ago

Really appreciate the work in getting this up and running, thanks for a great step-by-step instruction!
Now, if there was a way of making it start automatically after a power outage, I would be totally home free!!!

Reply
eloscurosecreto

1 day ago

Thank you for the prompt response.

What storage options (other than the internal disks) are available (externally) with ESXi 5 on the Mac Mini, if any?

I would like to be able to attach some sort of external device via thunderbolt (which I will test), FW or USB.

My lack of understanding ESXi may come into play within the aforementioned questions, my I apologies in advance.

Reply
- Paraguin
  
  1 day ago
  
  iSCSI would be the best option since it’s cheap and easily available. The I/O on the network card may cause some VMs to load slower as it loads off the network storage, but it would be very viable option. You can choose to build your own iSCSI storage server or buy something that is pre-configured to be iSCSI compatible.
  
  Reply