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OWC Ministack (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by storkinsj@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

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Has anyone successfully used this with ESXi?
https://www.owc.com/solutions/ministack

My Mini is in agony with a thunderbolt 10gbe adapter and 2 NVME M2 storage adaptors. They are hot to the touch and imagine how hot the mini is with its power supply doing all the work.

I have a free thunderbolt port. If I add another ethernet adaptor OR the other storage adaptor, it doesn't work . If I unplug something else it works. So I have definitely maxed the power on the mini.

If this worked it would not only be a nice housing for both the caching tier and storage tier for vsan, but it would also act as a powered thunderbolt "hub".

I would be really excited to hear if anyone else has successfully used this with esxi 7 or newer.

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[–] diamondsw@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

It's not Thunderbolt - it's just a USB disk enclosure with the cheapest possible 2.5" hard drive - yes, a spinning rust hard drive. The only thing you get over something $100 less is it stacks nicely with the Mini.

I'd say hard pass. What might work better is an external powered enclosure for the M.2's, as that would reduce the power budget your Mini is trying to satisfy.

[–] MasterDragonFly@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You’ll need the ministackSTX, which is a thunderbolt version to do what you are wanting to do.

[–] storkinsj@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Yes sorry that's the one I'm looking at. Have you used it with ESXi?

By the way it's offered with no internal drives and that's what I am planning to get. I already have the storage I'd like to put in there.

[–] storkinsj@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Looks like no one is doing this yet. I'm checking in with their engineering team. I'll post back when I get a solid answer and/or I've tried it.