ESXi ARM on Raspberry pi 5

[jvdmast69]

The Raspberry pi 5 is being delivered to many people. (I received mine last week)

I already figured out that UEFI boot is not (yet) possible, and I assume the rpi5 network card is also not (yet) supported by the current ESXi.

Are people already working on the steps to get ESXi ARM working on the Raspberry 5?

[jvdmast69]

  could you also help getting more info about UEFI boot on the rpi 5 (which I think is the first step)?

https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/issues/243

It looks like there is some progress, since somebody got Win11 booting with UEFI on a rpi5.

[paypack]

Yes, would love to see ESXi ARM running on Raspberry Pi 5 as well. With the current Raspberry Pi 5 device specs, I believe it specs is suitable to run ESXi App on it. Most people nowadays use device with ARM on it, hopefully RPi5 will get support from VMware.

[jvdmast69]

There are several challenges. First is to make (U)EFI boot possible, which is a requirement for ESXi to boot.
I know there is a lot of progress on that inside the WoR (Windows on Raspberry) project, however the only person who currently contains the working pieces is not sharing it yet. Expected to see it here within days... https://github.com/worproject/edk2-platforms

My source of information on that is partly from here https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/issues/243 and partly from within the WoR project itself.

Then I guess we'll need ESXi drivers for the hardware, such as USB, Network, storage.
Probably ESXi will start booting with working UEFI, but will then run into some unknown hardware for NIC, SATA, etcetera.

[jvdmast69]

Great news:

https://github.com/worproject/rpi5-uefi

Raspberry Pi 5 UEFI

This repository contains a TF-A + EDK2 UEFI firmware port for Raspberry Pi 5.

[primetechguides]

Thanks,

It does work. You need a compatible USB Ethernet adapter though.
I believe Realtek RTL8153. It can be quite picky with the models.

 

[paypack]

Nice, hopefully we will see more improvement to the works.

[jvdmast69]

  what specific improvements do you need?

[paypack]

 Support for onboard Raspberry Pi 5 ethernet?

[qmcizwjqjcqf31i]

I hope we get onboard Raspberry Pi 5 ethernet support soon.

[aenv432]

Someone from VMware/Broadcom has to take on this task, since the driver development kit is behind a paywall. This seems super unlikely to ever happen..

[mahangjun]

I just download files from this https://github.com/worproject/rpi5-uefi

Download files form https://github.com/worproject/rpi5-uefi/releases

Put all files to a sd card, and esxi 7 put on root.

Put rsp5 and use start from file, EFI/BOOT/BOOTAA64.EFI

And boot from esxi is ok.

If you have no usb eth card, you can't installer. 

Waiting for fixed this debug for using respberry pi 5 for eth.

[esloof]

[esloof]

Here's the blog post: https://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/3752-Setting-Up-ESXi-ARM-on-the-Raspberry-Pi-5.html

[primetechguides]

My results from a Saumsung 960 Pro NVMe on Pimoroni NVMe Base.

In the UEFI Bios when switching between PCIe modes, the Write speed does seem to scale up.
However even in PCIe 3.0 , the write performance is still about 45% slower it seems than when running native without ESXi

ESXI PCIE 3.0

Category Test Result
HDParm Disk Read 229.82 MB/sec
HDParm Cached Disk Read 218.94 MB/sec
DD Disk Write 274 MB/s
FIO 4k random read 108936 IOPS (435744 KB/s)
FIO 4k random write 42139 IOPS (168559 KB/s)
IOZone 4k read 82396 KB/s
IOZone 4k write 76295 KB/s
IOZone 4k random read 42185 KB/s
IOZone 4k random write 78336 KB/s

Score: 22485

****************************************************************

ESXI PCIE 2.0

Category Test Result
HDParm Disk Read 223.37 MB/sec
HDParm Cached Disk Read 221.80 MB/sec
DD Disk Write 161 MB/s
FIO 4k random read 84628 IOPS (338512 KB/s)
FIO 4k random write 56109 IOPS (224438 KB/s)
IOZone 4k read 86332 KB/s
IOZone 4k write 59302 KB/s
IOZone 4k random read 42104 KB/s
IOZone 4k random write 81483 KB/s

Score: 21933

****************************************************************

ESXI PCIE 1.0

Category Test Result
HDParm Disk Read 195.09 MB/sec
HDParm Cached Disk Read 189.17 MB/sec
DD Disk Write 89.0 MB/s
FIO 4k random read 49112 IOPS (196450 KB/s)
FIO 4k random write 26089 IOPS (104356 KB/s)
IOZone 4k read 69327 KB/s
IOZone 4k write 61822 KB/s
IOZone 4k random read 37869 KB/s
IOZone 4k random write 66519 KB/s

Score: 14962

#################################

Raspbian Native - PCIE 3.0

Category Test Result
HDParm Disk Read 805.45 MB/sec
HDParm Cached Disk Read 768.90 MB/sec
DD Disk Write 425 MB/s
FIO 4k random read 208979 IOPS (835918 KB/s)
FIO 4k random write 93090 IOPS (372363 KB/s)
IOZone 4k read 253909 KB/s
IOZone 4k write 185510 KB/s
IOZone 4k random read 61137 KB/s
IOZone 4k random write 206127 KB/s

Score: 49472

[primetechguides]

Here is a pre converted Raspbian Bookworm Lite Image. To import to ESXI
20GB new image, compressed to 1GB

Upload zip to datestore1
SSH to ESXI
cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1
unzip 2024-03-12-raspios-bookworm-arm64-lite_ESXI_20GB.zip
Register Existing Virtual Machine

https://mega.nz/file/eFxgDLRR#Tpf28i59HYExuExKPTToFGzb7ojz73c-1gUxwpS-PCs

 

[primetechguides]

I'm not sure whats changed but using the latest version of everything.

 

The management network never gets set up or saved.

 

I have to click F2 > Configure Management Network > Network Adapters > Tick vusb0
Once confirmed I can access ESXI via the web interface.

But whenever I reboot, I have to repated the above every time.

Any ideas, or anyone else have the same?

[jvdmast69]

  Yes I did had that issue, until I changed to a different USB NIC.

[Leslie Wiggins]

Does anyone have an NFS share working  on ESXi Arm,  trying to connect to an NFS share on a QNAP NAS, have no problems connection from a DELL running ESXi.  

I don't even see anything from the Pi in the connection log.

Using Fling 1.15 on Raspberry Pi 5

[Christos Pournaras]

Use the TPlink UE300 usb 2 Ethernet adapter . 

Enable ssh in your esxi and login as root 

type : 

esxcli system module parameters set -p "usbBusFullScanOnBootEnabled=1" -m vmkusb_nic_fling

If you want to make this persistent edit file  /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh and add the below lines : 

vusb0_status=$(esxcli network nic get -n vusb0 | grep 'Link Status' | awk '{print $NF}')
    count=0
    while [[ $count -lt 20 && "${vusb0_status}" != "Up" ]]
    do
        sleep 10
        count=$(( $count + 1 ))
        vusb0_status=$(esxcli network nic get -n vusb0 | grep 'Link Status' | awk '{print $NF}')
    done

    esxcfg-vswitch -R

that worked for me . Instructions here : https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-code/viewdocument/usb-network-native-driver-for-esxi?CommunityKey=5d6496d1-215a-4ead-99e1-ff49b96deaf6&tab=librarydocuments