Meet Your NEXT Mini Home Server! - iKOOLCORE R1

Not everyone wants or can even afford a GIANT rack of enterprise server hardware running 24/7 in their homes, and we have the answer! This is the #iKOOLCORE R1 super tiny but also super powerful computer! The first miniature computer we've looked at that has 4x 2.5GbE ports and can actually run VMware ESXi! Join us as we take a look at this incredible sandwich of hardware, install VMware ESXi on it, and take it for a spin!

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**TIMESTAMPS!**
0:00 Introduction
0:20 iKOOLCORE R1 features and specs.
1:33 Opening up the iKOOLCORE R1
2:42 Installing an NVMe in the iCOOLCORE R1
3:28 Why I think the iKOOLCORE R1 is kinda a big deal for #homelab
4:36 A low-power alternative to enterprise servers
5:18 Let's install VMWare ESXi 8 on the iKOOLCORE R1
6:16 Final thoughts and caveats
7:06 Closing! Thank you for watching! Subscribe already, wouldja?!

[AnandSharmaofficial]

Whenever I watch your video, it feels like - how come such a professional YT channel only has 20K subs!?

[hmurchison]

This thing is nuts! Let's see if they can scale and ship them. They had me at Intel NIC.

[iKOOLCORE]

Thank you for your review! The video is awesome! It should be pointed out that there is an error in the demonstration of installing the M.2 SSD. Installing the SSD only requires prying open the top cover and directly installing the SSD. There is no need to remove the four screws. The design of the top cover is a quick-release for easy installation of the SSD. If you observe carefully, you will find that one of the four screws has a fragile anti-tamper sticker attached to it.

[drphibesrises]

I would like to see this running pfsense, now that the new version supports i226-V.

[JasonsLabVideos]

WOAH the video editing on this !!.. Wil thus run hyper v with 12 vm's all with 32gigs ram in each ? :P. Kidding !! Good video Rich !! Perfect firewall in the hands !

[RenaissanceEarCandy]

Hi, I've asked a question over on your Mac classic retrofit video so I thought I'd grab your attention here in case you didn't get a notification for it

[KombiGnome]

I feel they missed an opportunity to use the top case as a passive heatsink for the nvme.

[jenyabo]

IOMMU 2.5 ports to different VMs and iperf3, please

[BrianThomas]

Wait..Wait... Let's not gloss over that so quickly. 4:49 You just said 1, 200 watts of power for the rack 24/7? Just for the rack? Nothing else? I thought I was using a lot of power. That's a ton of cash.

[wagnonforcolorado]

Would it make sense to run this as a VM Host with a PFSense VM, and an Nginx server for revers proxy? Seems like a good use case for the unit.

[GustavoMsTrashCan]

How about a orange pi 5 or a nanopi R6S?

[imissyy]

Hi, I bought this tiny computer weeks ago. Running ESXI8 on top with 2 VMs (Ubuntu server and OPNsense). No problem at all. But I couldn't monitor the temperature of this unit thru ESXi nor any of those VMs. Do you have any solution on this issue?