ESXi and Lenovo TS140

So in my free time I love to tinker and learn.

I often found myself using my main pc (built in 2005 but still chugging along) to be the main host of all my off the wall ideas. This was great for short term, non persistent stuff.  But nothing I wanted to keep on with a 900 watt power supply. This was great for short term stuff testing windows 10  , docker , chef.

I often found myself needing a computer to be on 24/7 to run things that needed to be on to remain viable such as a domain controller and storage shares etc.

In comes the Lenovo TS140.

One of the reasons why I decided on a tower form factor is that it would be way easier to quiet down if needed. I had grand plans for a Dell C1100 I had purchased on ebay dirt cheap, but I soon found out that it was WAY too loud (see airplane take off, loud). I tossed it in my garage and scratched my head until I found the TS140.

It is great on power drawing 0.5A at all times and is whisper quiet.  It was expandable so I could upgrade as needed, and came with 4GB of ram, and I purchased another 8GB bringing my total to 12GB. Threw in a SSD, a WD Red, and a thumb drive to install ESXi to and I was off to the races.

Soon I had one problem: “No Network Adapters”

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

Bummer .. Off to the see the almighty Google.
Lo and behold I find these great instructions on : http://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer.html

I soon found out how to create my own customized image.

If you don’t have the time to find out how to do that yourself follow these directions:

1) Obtain vib file from : https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/wiki/index.php/Net-e1000e-2

2) Download VMware PowerCLI version 5.1 or newer :http://www.vmware.com/go/powercli

3) Download ESXi-Customizer-PS : http://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer-ps.html

4) Extract “.VIB” anywhere. I made C:\temp\pkg

5) Load VMWare powercli and reference the esxi customizer script , and point to .VIB

5)a .\ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.3.ps1 -pkgDir C:\temp\pkg

6) Install / download Yumi http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

7) Burn flash drive with .iso output from step 5-5a

7a) https://i.imgur.com/V32IctB.png

Viola’

Soon enough I was able to install my node.

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn if you need any assistance.

Best,
Jose R. Esposito