Let me start this blog by thanking William Lam from VMware for sharing his ideas and giving me the confidence to purchase Intel NUC without any secondary thoughts. Below is a very good blog from Lam which confirms the support of multiple vendors to build an Esxi Lab and challenges we face and solutions to those..
https://williamlam.com/2020/03/homelab-considerations-for-vsphere-7.html
Below are the steps i followed to bring up the server and install ESXi 7.0 U3
1. Power up the NUC and make sure it boots up to the first screen without any issues, you would need a monitor and a keyboard connected to the NUC until you finish installing ESXi for the first time.
2. Make sure to have a dedicated power source. As we follow in data center changing the power source often is not at all a good idea and this would lead to server crash which might impact the running virtual machines. Also it is a pain to bring up all the VM in an order to make sure they work fine in Sync.
3. I used RUFUS 3.17.1846 to burn the ESXi ISO to an 16GB SANDISK USB. The same can be downloaded from below
https://rufus.ie/en/
4. RUFUS would take only about 5 mins to burn the ESXi which is super fast compared to anyother software out there. Once USB is ready make sure to reboot the NUC and it directly boots to the ESXi console.
Make sure to follow below steps to install ESXi
Boot the downloaded image file and choose the standard installer
Accept the End User License Agreement to continue
Choose the hard disk to install ESXi server 7.0 and press Enter key
You can refresh using F5 key if the hard disks are not visible
Enter a root password and confirm
Press F11 key to confirm the ESXi server 7.0 installation
Wait couple of minutes until the ESXi server 7.0 installation finish
Press Enter key to reboot after the installation
The ESXi server can be configured using function keys
192.168.1.25 – IP address given to manage the ESXi server
<F2> Customize System/ View logs
<F12> Shutdown /Restart
Basic Configuration
Change the IP address of the ESXi server 7.0
Press F2 key and enter the previously given root password
Configure the Management Network
Give an IP address (static IP 192.168.1.50 is given)
Press ‘Y’ to confirm the IP change and restart the management network
The new IP change will look like this
Log in using
After the installation and configuration of ESXi server 7.0, you can visit the ESXi login screen using the management IP address and the root password from a remote computer.
Using this interface you can create and maintain virtual machines.
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