#Esxi late 2012 mac mini upgrade

The 8.5″ width of the Microserver allows you to neatly fit two side-by-side in a 19″ wide rack mount shelf with 9 7/8″ depth. Although the clock speed has improved, even the latest N54l model retains the underpowered AMD Turion CPU. The Microserver is the loudest and most power consuming of the bunch with noise levels hovering around 22 dBA and power consumption averaging 38 watts. The Microserver meets almost every one of my requirements but is inadequately powered. After reading Simon’s article I immediately purchased a Microserver N36L and have been using it for the last three years. I was introduced to the idea of using a Microserver by Simon Seagrave’s October 2010 bLOG post Running VMware vSphere on an HP Microserver. The HP Proliant Microserver has always been a popular solution for a VMware Home Lab. I quickly narrowed it down to three candidates: The HP Proliant Microsever, Intel NUC, and the Apple MAC mini. With such a long list of requirements, I assumed that I may have to compromise on one or two items. Dual-nic Support, Must be able to support two NICs with at least one supporting WoL.

#Esxi late 2012 mac mini upgrade

Pre-built, out-of-the-box ready although I would be willing to upgrade memory or and hard disk drives.

Powerful, a minimum of an Intel i5 CPU and the ability to support a minimum 16 GB of RAM.

Lightweight, light enough to fit on the top of a Telco rack.

Quiet, no louder than a desktop computer.

Energy Efficient, consuming no more than 80 WATTS per host.

Hardware should be on the VMware HCL or supported within the VMware Community.

I had set the following goals for my new Home Lab environment: In preparation for the release of a new book I wanted to setup a local lab environment that I could use to capture screenshots and Adobe Captivate videos from.