Running ScaleIO in the HomeDC

In this Post, I will describe how I have come about in deploying a ScaleIO Software-Defined Storage in the Home Datacenter. Over the course of 2016, I have upgraded my clusters from VMware Virtual SAN Hybrid (Flash for Caching Tier and SAS Enterprise disks for...

Intel NUC Skull Canyon (NUC6I7KYK) and ESXi 6.0

As part of my ongoing expansion of the HomeDC, I was excited to learn about the availability of the latest Quad-Core Intel NUC a few months ago. Last friday I received my first Intel NUC Skylake NUC6I7KYK. I only started setting it up this afternoon. I usually do...

Upgrading Mellanox ConnectX firmware within ESXi

Last summer, while reading the ServeTheHome.com website, I saw a great link to Ebay for Mellanox ConnectX-3 VPI cards (MCX354A-FCBT). These cards where selling at $299 on ebay. I took three of the awesome cards. These Mellanox ConnectX-3 VPI adapters where simply too...

Adding Realtek R8168 Driver to ESXi 5.5.0 ISO

Update 20 March 2014. With the release of VMware ESXi 5.5.0 Update 1, this blog post is once again very popular. A lot of other articles, blogs and forum discussions have been using the Realtek R8168 driver link to my website, and this is starting to take an impact on...