With a special thanks to @VirtualDominic and my local VMUG PDX leaders and friends, I was able to play around with the new Intel i7 NUC.
Link to the Intel NUC website if interested —> here
This new i7 NUC powers an i7-6770HQ which translates to a quad core, eight thread 2.6ghz+3.5ghz turbo processor.
Since this is part of the 6th gen Intel processors, it pairs with up to 64GB of DDR4-2133 memory, and the Intel Iris Pro 580 GPU which can push 4K @ 60fps over Display Port.
The NUC has room for two M.2 SATA3 NVMe SSDs. This sounds like an amazing chance to test an all NVMe flash vSAN.
This Mini PC uses under 20watts at idle and up to 80 Watts at full load. The 80 watt high water mark considers the use of the GPU and since we only care about CPU cycles for our virtual workloads, we should float around 30-40 watts for normal test lab usage.
We now have the opportunity to use two physical servers and a third as a witness VM for our three node vSAN. This means we can float eight cores, sixteen threads and 64-128GB of ram across two i7 NUCs and have all of it running around 50-80 watts for both nodes. A high performance test lab running on less power than the old incandescent light bulb. Though, some day that analogy will change as LED bulbs take over our homes. So, lets say, a high performance test lab running less than ten LED bulbs….. that your kids left on….all day….
Now to the Lego build. For this build, we selected a tall tower. Since the cooling profile of these i7 NUCs is to suck in heat on the side and blast it out the back, I had to make a building that was able to pull cool air up and then freely throw it out the back. Since some reviews show the NUC running at 110F (42C) at the heat sink exhaust, I needed to add more cooling to prevent total Lego meltdown.
I started with a solid base and built in a 120mm case fan that can run off of a 5v USB connector.
Next was the addition of the side wall and support columns:
Time to add in the fancy front columns, some flair on the wall, and ensuring that all of the NUC ports are available.
Here is a snap of the completed tower with the power button and USB ports showing in the front.
And here is the final build. A fully built tower with a throne for our Megaman Hero.
Time to top if off with a little VMware branding.
If you have any questions about the build or NUCs, please send me a message on twitter @vmnick0