ESXi on Macpro6,1 Unplugging display kills the ESXi

[shyamgopal]

I have successfully installed ESXi 6.7U3 on a MacPro6,1. (also tried 6.5U3 and 7.0). The install was flawless however as soon as I unplug the Thunderbolt Display the ESXi is no longer reachable (ping fail) and I can not get it back even after reconnecting the display.

I saw a post on another forum suggesting an HDMI dummy dongle to keep the Display active, well, that did not work either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm at my wits end trying to figure this out. The HCL says it works, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

here is my configuration

CPU - Xeon E5-2697 - 12 core

RAM - 64GB

GPU - D300

I've already searched google and all forums I know, but their is no mention of this issue but there seems to be a lot of folks using the MacPro6,1 in home labs and such.

Regards.

Shyam

[shyamgopal]

The display card on the MacPro shuts down if no display is connected to it. My Guess is that this is because the esxi display driver does not fully "understand" the display adapter etc.

The solutin is to ensure that even is no display is connected, make the esxi think that there is a display. For this you need a $2 worth display "simulator". You can find it on Amazon, look for "HDMI Dummy Plug Display Emulator for Headless PC 4096x2160@60Hz, 4K Virtual Screen"

This works like a charm. You can unplug or plugin your display at will as long as you have this Dummy HDMI plug connected.