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Building the VMware vSphere 8 and Veeam VBR v12 on Intel NUC 12

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Model: NUC12WSHi5
Processor type: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1240P
Memory: G.Skill RipJaws DDR4 SO-DIMM Series 64GB
Storage: SAMSUNG 980 SSD 1TB PCle 3.0×4, NVMe M.2 2280
Network: Intel Ethernet Controller I225 Series
VMware vSphere Edition: ESXi-8.0b-21203435-standard (VMware, Inc.)
Veeam Backup and Replication Edition: 12.0.0.1420

Preparation

Download VMware-VMvisor-Installer-8.0b-21203435.x86_64.iso
Download VMware-VCSA-all-8.0.0-21457384.iso
Download Veeam Backup and Replication v12 iso
VMware vSphere 8 Enterprise Plus license
VMware vCenter 8 Standard Edition license
Veeam Data Platform Advanced license

Remark: When you try to install ESXi 7.0 or 8.0 on a system with 12th Gen Intel 1240 CPU, the installation fails with the following PSOD. You need to follow the following steps to install the ESXi 8.0.

Fatal CPU mismatch on feature “Hyperthreads per core”
Fatal CPU mismatch on feature “Cores per package”
Fatal CPU mismatch on feature “Cores per die”

Installation

  1. Create a bootable USB drive with ESXi 8.0 installer, e.g. Rufus
  2. Insert the bootable USB drive into the Intel NUC 12 Pro and power it on
  3. Press “SHIFT+O” and append the following kernel option
  4. Add “cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic=FALSE” and the press enter to continue the boot process
  5. Continue the installation of vSphere 8.0
  6. Once the installation is completed, please do not reboot now
  7. Switch into the ESXi shell by press “ALT+F1″ and login with root and blank password
  8. vi /vmfs/volumes/BOOTBANK1/boot.cfg
  9. Add “cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic=FALSE” behind “autoParition=FALSE” and then save the changes
  10. Reboot the ESXi host
  11. To make the kernel option permanent, switch into the ESXi shell by press “ALT+F1” after reboot the ESXi host
  12. Go to Troubleshooting Options, “Enable ESXi Shell“
  13. Now run the following ESXCLI command to configure the kernel option:
  14. esxcli system settings kernel set -s cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic -v FALSE
  15. esxcli system settings kernel list -o cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic
  16. Finally, disable the ESXi Shell
  17. Reboot the ESXi host again

The you can deploy vCenter Server with VCSA 8.0 iso into the ESXi 8.0.

Add the ESXi 8.0 into vCenter 8.0 Server.

Finally you can deploy the Veeam Backup and Replication v12.

Categories: vExpert VMware

Victor Wu

Chief Architect, Blogger, Author at Dell EMC Knowledge Sharing & Packt

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