Rock5A ESXi Smoke Test

ROCK 5 Series 5A
1

I’ve had success with the most current version of ESXi for ARM on the Rock5A.

I have not spun up any VM’s yet.

The Rock5A is being managed on my vCenter.

  1. I could not SPI flash the UEFI from EDK2.
    –Zeroed the SPI
    –Put the EDK2 image on the micro SD Releases · edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 · GitHub

  2. used a USB3 Ethernet/HUB with compatible Realtek Chipset
    –plugged in USB with ESXi Installer
    –plugged in USB for ESXi install target
    –plugged in Cat5
    –plugged in USB Keyboard into hub ( Required for install ----> 2 USB thumb drives & the KBD all into the hub )

  3. Install ESXi
    –select USB NIC deselect the onboard NIC
    –regular ESXi install otherwise

  4. Remove install USB and re-boot

Also, there is a much simpler install of Proxmox on the Rock5A & Rock5B Checck my prior posts

29%20PM
29%20PM489×218 19.5 KB

20240218_235256
20240218_2352564000×3000 1.94 MB

1 Like
2

Hello!
I’am excited of your success and have some ideas on running esxi8b on rock 5 itx

Do you think it’s possible?
And what i will need to success?
USB-nic, only or some firmware change?
What do you think?

In case of success i will share my experience, surely
Thank you!

3

Sorry for the slow response. I did not see your reply in my inbox.

I’ll give it a try. Right now it is a bit of a process to get running.

No promises on the timeline!

4

OK, ESXi 8 loads without an external USB NIC

5

Thank you for responding.
It’s really exciting.
But i have one more question
Vmware has new technology RAM Tiering and it’s working nicely on x86



Is this available on arm version?

6

OK, pretty cool! I do not have an NVME on the Rock5a

It accepts the command without throwing an error

esxcli system settings kernel set -s MemoryTiering -v TRUE

7

Wow!
It’s inspiring
Hm. Making host with x4 physical ram (even slower) for about $300 and 30-50W power consumption gives me a lot of opportunities
Thank you

8

You sent me down a rabbit hole, but I appreciate the challenge and have learned some things.

I have both the Rock5a & Rock5B booting ESXi 8

The Rock5a does not need a USB nic, but the Rock5B needs a USB nic, could explore adding drivers for the nic, but not there yet.

The Rock5a boots from a thumb drive, the Roc5B will boot from the NVME, but I was only able to install ESXi8 to the NVME while it was in a USB case, then screw it on to the board & ofcoarse both require the correct UEFI from https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588?tab=readme-ov-file