So to provide details in this thread in case someone searches it out:
I was able to get ESXi running on the mini but it requires booting from a flash drive. So you have two flash drives when you start. One with the installer and the other is the one you are going to install ESXi onto and leave plugged into the mini. You will also need to disable secure boot and enable flash drive booting... DuckDuckGo that yourself.
If you go with the 10GbE option, you'll need to ensure you use the latest and greatest from VMware otherwise it won't recognize the NIC and will not install ESXi at all as VMware requires the NIC before it will complete the install. I had to make my own custom installer using a PC, PowerShell and PowerCLI using
this script. As a free user (for my personal account) I'm not able to download the correct version off the start, so use this and you will be fine. I did a 6.7 and 7.0b version. However I'm running 7.0U1 now thanks to CLI upgrades from shell in the host itself. Here is an example of the command used to build the custom installer:
Code:
.\ESXi-Customizer-PS.ps1 -v70 -pkgDir E:\ESXi -outDir E:\ESXi -nsc
In the pkgDir I had the
offline bundle for the NIC. Yes it is v6.7 but works with 7.0.
Once you get it running you'll need to connect storage or you won't be able to complete the upgrades to ESXi that bring it to the most current. In my case I have a NAS with iSCSI support and made a LUN for it. Now I'm using the 10GbE for networking and SAN connectivity. I've read that Thunderbolt drives are supported but I don't have one so I went with the NAS option. As of right now, the internal storage on the mini is not accessible to ESXi at all. So I paid to have 2TB put in there but can't touch it. I'm really hoping an update is made available that will give me access to that storage... I don't like feeling like I wasted money.
Currently I have 11 VMs loaded on it but only 9 running.