Comments on: Building a Windows Server Lab with an Intel NUC

By: Thomas Maurer

Thomas Maurer — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 09:31:10 +0000

In reply to Ray Kay. awesome!

By: Ray Kay

Ray Kay — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 21:16:16 +0000

I have been using intel nuc7i7dnhe models, these have native Windows 2019 support for their lan ports.
That combined with internal-usb-connected expansion slot LAN ports {realtek] for management, I’m a happy camper [no dongles] with my intel HyperV hosts, now looking at a separate DC NUC to complete my cluster.

Running these for more than 2 years non stop now [short pause when reinstalling to windows 2019 datacenter], no issues. All the essential drivers for devices work, not every driver, i.e. no BT/Wifi. and i spent nu time getting them to work, not neccessary for what I want with it. Clustered Hyper-V.

By: little fooch

little fooch — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 14:20:31 +0000

Hardware aside, has anyone been able to replicate the ethernet/tb networking as discussed in the 2014 White Paper from Intel, called "Thunderbolt Networking Bridging and Routing Instructional White Paper", thanks

By: Michael Williams

Michael Williams — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 07:11:42 +0000

I haven’t done this on a Server Core – only on a full GUI (2016 & 2019). But if you can select your own driver in Server Core then you should be able to follow the same description;

“Fetch the latest greatest PROSetx64.exe from Intel with Server 2019 drivers for the i219-V adapter.
Unzip the exe file and find the folder with the actual driver files named PRO1000\Winx64\NDIS68
Do a manual install of the drivers (Rightclick Update Driver in Device Manager, Browse my computer for computer software”, “Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer”, select “Network Adapter”, Select “Have Disk…” and point to the folder mentioned above. Now select i219-LM (the i219-V is not shown but is the same as i219-LM)”

I upgraded my NUCs a few month ago to generation 10 – I could get almost the same of money for my generation 8. I just transferred the RAM and the M.2 to the new and everything worked right away – now with 6 cores :-)
Mine is currently still running with Server 2019 – including the HyperV role.

By: Morten Skov

Morten Skov — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 22:01:47 +0000

@Michael Williams – how do you get the Nic to work in a hyper-v server 2016 core installation?

By: Michael Williams

Michael Williams — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 13:25:14 +0000

My description from the 31’th of October 2019 in this thread I gave detailed info on how to make the builtin NIC to work in Microsoft Server.

By: Bas Nunnikhoven

Bas Nunnikhoven — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 07:35:22 +0000

Hi man.

Currently I am in the same situation that everything works just fine but the network adapter is not installing and whatever I try, I can not solve it. Looks like the drivers for the ethernet network adapter are not compable for windows server standard 2019.

What I found out is that when I add an external USB hub where a lan port is included, I do have acces to the internet. But for a server enviroment I don’t think a USB connection for the network is as smart and reliable then the build in ethernet port on the NUC whenever it works.

The NUC we are using is: BXNUC10i7FNH2
Installed is 32 GB of ram and 1TB SSD

All support is more then welcome since I am trying to fix it for over a week now without result yet.

Thanks a lot!

Greeting,
Bas

By: Andi

Andi — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 14:09:47 +0000

You can get NUC8i7BEH which runs on i7 and it works with 64GB Samsung memory (2x32GB). I am using a few for my Kubernetes lab and they are small and quiet but you will have some limitation on the NICs. If you need more NICs, you can either try the Skull version, NUC8i7HNK which has 2 Intel NICs or just use the first one with 1 or 2 Anker USB3 Ethernet adapters. With some minor tweaks they work very nice with ESXi 6.7.
First one has a NVMe port for a SSD and a SATA 2.5 inch SSD and the second NUC model has the option of 2 x NVMe disks. I don’t see the need for such a powerfull CPU in a lab.

Hope it helps you.

By: Boštjan Naraločnik

Boštjan Naraločnik — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 12:11:55 +0000

Hi Thomas, Thanks for your useful isight. I am just now considering the NIC to run Win Hyper V or ESx-i for some Virtual machines (mostly for DCS programming SW testing). I was looking also at i9 intel nuc which supports more than 32 GB ram but the price is a litle steep.

By: Ashutosh H Deshpande

Ashutosh H Deshpande — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 11:27:56 +0000

Hi Thomas, Thanks for this one. I did setup a similar LAB on my NUC8i5BEH model with Windows Sevrer 2016 and or 2019.
I was unable to fix or install or even enable WIRED LAN / Ethernet on same NUC8i5BEH after installed Windows 2016 Server and also tried with Windows 2019 Server.
The error message says, Device doesnt exist.
Neither Intel nor Microsoft Support was able to assist.

Appreciate your guidance / assistance.