VMware ESX on Arm Tech Preview
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Overview:

Arm-based servers are supported as a technical preview in ESX 9.1. This document describes the features supported in the tech preview.
All content is confidential and subject to change.


Introduction        2
Installation, Update, and Support Notes        3
Server and CPU support        4

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Introduction:

Support for Arm-based servers is in technical preview in ESX 9.1 and not all ESX features are supported. See the Installation, Update, and Support Notes section for details.

*This content is subject to change*

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Installation, Update and Support Notes:

* This release is applicable only to new installations. 
* Deploy the vCenter instance that manages a cluster of Arm hosts on an x86 ESX host.
Important:  Arm host clusters must be managed by a separate, standalone vCenter running on x86. We do not recommend managing x86 installations and Arm installations from the same vCenter.

* Updates will be provided by the same offline depot from which you download the main Arm distribution.
* The following guest operating systems are supported and qualified:
   * Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL): 9.6 and later, 10.0 and later
   * Ubuntu: 24.04 LTS (24.04.3 and later), 26.04 LTS
   * SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES): 15 SP7, 16.0 and later

* Virtual Machine Disks (VMDK) are supported on remote storage such as NFSv3, NFSv4.1, and software iSCSI.
* I/O: SATA and NVME SSDs storage drives as well as Mellanox ConnectX, and Intel NICs are supported.


Support Notes:
This release does not provide error messages for the unsupported operations listed below and they fail silently: 

   * Mixing Arm and x86 hosts in the same cluster.
   * Running x86 workloads on Arm hosts.
   * Running Arm workloads on x86 hosts.
   * Migrating workloads between x86 and Arm hosts.
   * Migrating workloads between different Arm CPUs (e.g. Ampere Altra and nVidia Grace) 

* Arm clusters inside VCF workload domains are not supported. An Arm cluster must be managed by a standalone vCenter instance.

* The following VCF capabilities are not supported on Arm:
   * vSAN (Hyper-Converged Storage)
   * NSX
   * Fiber-Channel
   * NVMe-over-TCP
   * RDMA
   * Hardware iSCSI
   * vSphere API for Array Integration (VAAI). If you require VAAI support, contact a Technical Account Manager
   * vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) is unsupported since it is deprecated
   * Precision Time Protocol (PTP)
   * Device Virtualization Extensions (DVX)
   * 3D Graphics on guest OS
   * vSphere Configuration Profiles (VCP)
   * Fault Tolerance (Guest level redundancy)
   * Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC).  All Arm hosts of a particular CPU type must be in a separate vSphere cluster.
   * vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) and vSphere Supervisor are not supported.
   * The use of Auto Deploy is not supported since it is deprecated.
   * Live patches and express patches are not supported. All updates require a reboot of the Arm hosts.

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Server and CPU support:
Arm-based servers can be obtained from a variety of vendors. In this tech preview, we support the following:

Server Model and CPU:

	HPE RL300 Gen11  --  Ampere Altra/AltraMax
	Gigabyte  --  Ampere Altra/AltraMax
	SuperMicro ARS-221GL  --  Single and Dual-CPU Nvidia Grace (C1,C2)
	

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