ESXi-Arm Fling

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  • 1.  ESXi on Raspberry CM4 with eMMC

    Posted Mar 24, 2022 09:12 AM

    Hello everyone,

    my name is Martina and I am an electronic engineering student.
    I am currently working on my Master Thesis and the first step to my project would be installing ESXi on a Raspberry.

    I have seen many tutorials on how to run ESXi on a Raspberry Pi 4b (8GB Model) but I was equipped with a Raspberry CM4 with eMMC by my supervisor, and I have tried to run ESXi on it for a week now without success.

    The eMMC prevents the board from booting from an external microSD and I am not even able to boot from the USB drive to tun ESXi.
    I have recently seen that wmare official website lists the supported ESXi-Arm Hardware, which for Raspberry are:

    •  Raspberry Pi 4b (4 GB or 8GB Model),
    •  Raspberry Pi 400.

    I was wondering if the issues I am experiencing in getting ESXi to work on the CM4 are related to the incompatibility of the HW I have with the task I am supposed to perform.

    Hope you can help me with this.

    Thank you,
    Martina



  • 2.  RE: ESXi on Raspberry CM4 with eMMC

    Posted Mar 24, 2022 09:21 AM

    Thread reported so moderators know it should be moved to the area for the ESXi on ARM Fling.

     



  • 3.  RE: ESXi on Raspberry CM4 with eMMC

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Mar 24, 2022 01:47 PM

    Hello Martina,

    The ESXi Arm Fling does not support the CM4 at the moment. You need to ask your supervisor for either a Raspberry Pi 4b (with 4GB or 8GB), or a Raspberry Pi 400.

    Cyprien



  • 4.  RE: ESXi on Raspberry CM4 with eMMC

    Posted Sep 08, 2022 02:31 PM

    Hi.

    I just installed ESXi on my CM4, it works no problem.

    I used the offiziel I/O board, but it should work with others as long as they expose the "disable eMMC boot" jumper and the slave USB port.

    All you need to do is to set the "disable eMMC boot" jumper, which will bring the CM4 up in usb boot mode, after power on; then you can use the "usbboot" tool from the official RPi GitHub to get the CM4 into "mass storage device" mode ()connect the micro.USB slave port with your PC), which lets you see the eMCC as kind of a normal flashdrive on your PC.

    Then, whenever a tut or guide tells you to do something with the SD, you just do it with this USB device.

    Still need to install the actual ESXi onto a USB drive, though, I don't think it'll be able to be installed and boot from the eMMC - which is kinda sad, but hey, at least it works.