[SOLVED] NUC, ESXi and 2nd NIC (Thunderbolt)?

[klaymen]

Hi everybody,

I'd like to use an Intel NUC (DC53427HYE, 3rd Gen) as an ESXi server in the context of a malware sandbox. I managed to use a modified ESXi5.5 image (as described here) so the internal nic can be configured correctly (hurray!).

Unfortunately I need a second nic for the sandbox setup (one for management, one for the malware traffic itself), and it should be on seperate physical interfaces for security reasons. My first thought was to use the thunderbolt Ethernet adapter I got for my Macbook Retina, which of course was not recognized. Then I tried to follow instructions for using the thunderbolt adapter on a MacMini in the hope it would work for my adapter too (actually by adding the vghetto-apple-thunderbolder-ethernet.vib to the running system), but still no success, neither after reboots. I don't even see anything in dmesg wgen I insert the adapter. I'm not sure if the adapter is teh same as described on the page above, there a device ID of 14e4:1682 in mentioned; I have no idea what ID my adapter has, the Macbook identifies it as "Device ID: 0x8003", but that seems to be something different (plus it has a MAC address that belongs to Apple, not Broadcom).

My question now is if there's a solution for this, maybe a different driver is required... I wouldn't mind buying another ethernet adapter (based on USB or thunderbolt), if I can have some confidence it would work with ESXi on NUC. I didn't find a list of compatible products though.

Thanks for any suggestions,

Andy

 

[klaymen]

Hi again,

I could solve the problem meanwhile... pretty stupid, but of course the NUC doesn't have a thunderbolt interface, I just confused the existing mini displayport plug with it :-( I Got an USB ethernet dongle now, and it works with that (ESXi doesn't recognize that neither, but as it's only required for the guests, this is not a problem).

 

[RaiderJ]

I was looking at doing this exact thing. For your USB Ethernet setup, what did you use? Did you pass it through to a VM?

 

[holden j caufield]

I've passed through an usb ethernet to UTM vm server. I think it may have been natively detected in esx 5.1 or 5.5. I'll have to dig it up again later.

 

[RaiderJ]

That sounds like it would work for what I'm doing. I'd like to passthrough a USB Ethernet adapter to a pfSense VM. From what I understand, the adapter would have to be USB 2.0, since USB 3.0 won't work. But, I'm not sure if that can be done with the external ports on the NUC, since they're all USB 3.0.

 

[holden j caufield]

I used this and passed it a sophos UTM. I know it worked

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004JO9AJK

this was a long time ago 5 or 5.1

I have passed through a usb 3.0 controller to a win7 vm and just loaded up the drivers like any other device. Also passed through a radeon and usb audio, usb kvm. So I had an esx server + one of the vm was my actual desktop since it passed through video/audio/and keyboard/mouse.