As I have to admit it depends a lot on what kind of specifications your device has. Most have some sort of Samsung 970 evo SSD and 16GB DDR4 SODIMM installed in the machine. This should be plenty of power to tinker around with it.

These days you can do a lot with a Next Unit of Computing or shortly NUC. Perhaps you want to set up a NAS, Home Theater PC or use 3 of them as a VMware cluster. It will probably draw less power, make less noice and save some money in the process than any other alternative.

Because I like the technical side of things as well, here is how you install an ESXi (I will use version 7.0) on your NUC.

Lets download the ESXi image Offline Bundle first from the VMware Customer Connect website, you’ll have to create a new account if you don’t already have one.

Because the network port drivers are not by default supported by VMware you will have to add them manually to the VMware ESXi image. So you’ll have to download the Network Driver for the NUC as well.

You need to have the Python installed on your computer, I used version 3.10 with the default installation.

When downloaded and sorted both files in you Downloads folder we have to prepare PowerShell to use VMware PowerCLI with the following command:
Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI

To add the ESXi image and drivers to the VMware PowerCLI session use the following command with your own image name off course:
Add-EsxSoftwareDepot .\VMware-ESXi-7.0U3e-19898904-depot.zip

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot .\Net-Community-Driver_1.2.7.0-1vmw.700.1.0.15843807_19480755.zip

We will create a new Image Profile for us to use on the NUC
New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile “ESXi-7.0U3e-19898904-standard” -name “ESXi-7.0U3e-19898904-NUC” -Vendor “NUC”

Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile “ESXi-7.0U3e-19898904-NUC” -SoftwarePackage “net-community”

And for the last part we’ll use the export command to create our ISO file
Export-ESXImageProfile -ImageProfile “ESXi-7.0U3e-19898904-NUC” -ExportToISO -filepath ESXi-7.0U3e-19898904-NUC.iso

Now we have the ISO we are going to use for installation on the NUC so we can upload it to an Bootable USB Stick (FAT32/ GPT formatted)

The installation is as straightforward as can be, probably what people working in IT do a couple of times a day:

• F11 to Accept
• Select the right disk
• Choose US Default
• Enter the Root Password
• And of course F11 to Accept

At last I would leave the configuration of the ESXi to you, how you like it best. just don’t forget to get the license key of your ESXi version (For personal use only!) from the VMware website as well.

When everything is installed correctly try to turn on the feature for starting the NUC automatically when a Power Source is connected. This can be done by going to the BIOS (F2 at startup) -> Power -> Secondary Power Settings and setting the “After Power Failure” option to “Power On”.

Side Note! If you shutdown the device intentionally it will stay powered down.


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