Beside NUCs and Mac minis there is another great barebone in the homelab market. Basic requirements for home server are a decent price, good performance and low power consumption. Gigabytes BRIX offers great performance and is small in size and power consumption and thus makes it a great candidate for running ESXi at home. To get started, first a look at the different models available at the moment.

BRIX: Basic Barebone, candidate for ESXi.

GB-BXi3-4010: Intel Core i3-4010U (2x 1.7GHz)

GB-BXi5-4200: Intel Core i5-4200U (2x 2.6GHz)

GB-BXi7-4500: Intel Core i7-4500U (2x 3.0GHz)

BRIX s: Identical to BRIX barebones but with 2.5" HDD/SDD support. Slightly larger case and a good candidate for ESXi.

GB-BXi3H-4010: Intel Core i3-4010U (2x 1.7GHz)

GB-BXi5H-4200: Intel Core i5-4200U (2x 2.6GHz)

GB-BXi7H-4500: Intel Core i7-4500U (2x 3.0GHz)

BRIX Pro: High performance BRIX with 2.5" HDD/SDD support and quad-core CPU. These are the only systems with VT-d support and thus the best candidate for ESXi.

GB-BXi5-4570R: Intel Core i5-4570R (4x 3.20 GHz)

GB-BXi7-4770R: Intel Core i7-4770R (4x 3.90 GHz)

There is also a Brix Gaming series with GPU support and a BRIX Projector with an integrated projector. BRIX with AMD and Celeron CPUs are also available but these are not the best candidates for ESXi. I'm listing them here for completeness.

BRIX Projector GB-BXPi3-4010

BRIX Gaming GB-BXi5G3-760

BRIX Gaming GB-BXi5G-760

BRIX Gaming GB-BXi7G3-760

BRIX Gaming (AMD) GB-BXA8G-8890

BRIC (AMD) GB-BXA8-5545

BRIX (Celeron) GB-BXBT-2807

Features

The Kits are shipped with:

Chassis

System board

Processor (soldered)

power adapter

Power cord

VESA Bracket

To get an ESXi Host installed you need:

Memory (SO-DIMM DDR3L)

mSATA SSD

USB-Stick

2,5" HDD/HDD (BRIX s and BRIX Pro)

Model comparison

Best candidates for ESXi are BRIX, BRIX s and BRIX Pro. I am not looking further into other models.

Series BRIX

BRIX s BRIX

BRIX s BRIX

BRIX s BRIX Pro BRIX Pro Model (BX-) BXi3-4010

BXi3H-4010 BXi5-4200

BXi5H-4200 BXi7-4500

BXi7H-4500 BXi5-4570R BXi7-4770R CPU 4th generation Intel Core processors Processor i3-4010U i5-4200U i7-4500U i5-4570R i7-4770R Clock Speed 1.7GHz 1.6GHz / 2.6GHz 1.8GHz / 3.0GHz 3.20 GHz 3.90 GHz Cores 2 2 2 4 4 Max Memory 16 GB 16 GB 16 GB 16 GB 16 GB Network Gigabit LAN Gigabit LAN Gigabit LAN Gigabit LAN Gigabit LAN Ports 4x USB 3.0 4x USB 3.0 4x USB 3.0 4x USB 3.0 4x USB 3.0 Intel VT-d NO NO NO YES YES Intel VT-x YES YES YES YES YES TDP 15W 15W 15W 65W 65W Price $260 $340 $490 $480 $600

HCL and VMware ESXi Support

All listed BRIX systems have hardware support for virtualization and a 64-bit capable CPU. Therefore it should be compatible to VMware ESXi. Gigabyte BRIX Pro barebones have Intel VT-d support which makes the system better and installation easier.

To clarify, the system is not supported by VMware (Not listed in HCL), so do not use this system in a productive environment. I can not guarantee that it will work stable. As a home lab, or a small home server it should be fine.

You have to create a customized image or the installer will fail with the following error message:

No Network Adapters No network adapters were detected. Either no network adapters are physically connected to the system, or a suitable driver could not be located. A third party driver my be required.

Install ESXi on Gigabyte BRIX

SATA and Network drivers are not included in the ESXi Base Image, so you have to create a customized image. This is a very easy step, everyone can do it at home in 10 minutes.

Download and install vSphere PowerCLI 5.8 to use the Image Builder. This requires an account at vmware.com. If you are not entitled to download PowerCLI, register for an evaluation. Open VMware vSphere PowerCLI

Use the following commands to create a customized ESXi Image for you BRIX. This will download all required files (about 300MB) and create a bootable ISO file. If you want to use another ESXi version than ESXi 5.5 February Patch 2015, select another Image Profile. A list of all Image Profiles is available here.

Create an ISO if you have a BRIX Pro Add-EsxSoftwareDepot https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-standard" -name "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -Vendor "virten.net" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "net-r8168" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "net-r8169" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "net-sky2" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "net-s2io" Export-ESXImageProfile -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -ExportToISO -filepath ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX.iso Create an ISO is you have a BRIX or BRIX s Add-EsxSoftwareDepot https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml Add-EsxSoftwareDepot http://vibsdepot.v-front.de New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-standard" -name "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -Vendor "virten.net" -AcceptanceLevel "CommunitySupported" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "net-r8168" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "net-r8169" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "net-sky2" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "net-s2io" Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -SoftwarePackage "sata-xahci" Export-ESXImageProfile -ImageProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX" -ExportToISO -filepath ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX.iso Credit for the sata-xahci map file goes to Andreas Peetz at VMware Front Experience. Burn ESXi-5.5.0-20150204001-BRIX.iso to a cd or create a usb flash drive Connect an external CD drive with the customized CD to the BRIX or connect flash drive Turn on the Brix Press DEL until the BIOS screen appears Navigate to Boot and disable CSM parameters BRIX Pro should be able to install ESXi now. BRIX and BRIX s require a little tweak For BRIX and BRIX s press SHIFT+O during the first 5 seconds on ESXi Installer

Append noIOMMU as boot option and press ENTER

Install ESXi After the installation add noIOMMU to kernelopt in /bootbank/boot.cfg

vi /bootbank/boot.cfg

That's it. Please remember that step 11-14 are only required for BRIX and BRIX s.

Tested ESXi Versions

VMware ESXi 4.1

VMware ESXi 5.0

VMware ESXi 5.1

VMware ESXi 5.5

VMware ESXi 6.0 (Beta)

Power consumption

Power consumption differs based on the model. BRIX and BRIX s have a ultra-low power mobile CPUs, BRIX Pro have desktop CPUs. The power consumption (Idle, Max) is about:

BRIX and BRIX s: 10W - 27W

BRIX Pro: 14W - 82W

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