[Using optical drives in a virtual machine?]

I tried a few things and then learned that Synology/DSM doesn't support optical drives so the VM would never be able to see it anyway

[Using optical drives in a virtual machine?]

I have a Windows 10 VM up and running through VMM and I'd like to use it to rip/convert blue-rays. I'm trying to figure out if its even possible to have the drive show up.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Is it possible to use a Silverstone PCIe expansion card to use NVMe as cache?]

9 hours ago, flyride said:

This doesn't make sense to me.  You state that you are allowing ESXi access to physical disks.  If you used a full passthru of your SATA controller, DSM should have full hardware access to the SATA drive and recognize as SSD.  I don't know exactly how RDM would work though.  A vmdk shows up per the above.  Passthru of your NVMe drive won't work at all. Maybe you are mixing up results from your SATA and NVMe drives?

Everything I mentioned was via VMware Workstation Pro (on Windows 10).  Giving physical access to the drives would make both NVME and SSD show up as HDD in the Synology OS.   I experimented with treating both drives as Sata, NVme, SCSI.... the choice didn't matter. And I always chose "Advanced: Physical Access."  I also tried each drive individually (literally removing the other from the machine) just to test if the PCIe card had been causing the issue. No Dice. 

 

Although, booting the OS from USB works great and there are no issues with the SSD. But (as expected) the NVMe doesn't show up at all.  

 

I've never tried ESXi and I'm honestly a little confused why you would want to run a VM off of bare metal... wouldn't it be better to run the DSM on the machine and run VMs through DSM? I'll have to look into that more.  Although.... now that I type that.....  if ESXi recognized the PCIe card, it would be interesting to see if the NVMe works to its full potential (even if DSM labels it as an SSD)

 

 

[Is it possible to use a Silverstone PCIe expansion card to use NVMe as cache?]

14 hours ago, IG-88 said:

 

you cant give "physical access" to the disk to a vm, 

 

Yeah the option says "physical access" but I see what you mean. Its not truly direct access.  I gave up on doing through a VM and just used a USB loader and the SSD shows up no problem. Its too bad about the NVMe though.  Hopefully Xpenology can get that working sometime in the future.  As far as I know, there is only one Synology model (DS918+) that has NVMe slots built-in anyway so I image it will be awhile :/

 

Thanks again for the help. 

 

  

[Is it possible to use a Silverstone PCIe expansion card to use NVMe as cache?]

1 hour ago, IG-88 said:

 

the model and SSD I'm using are on the list and I'm not using virtual disks I'm allowing VMware access to physical disks.  There is so little info out there (and the search function is awful) 

 

I'll keep hunting but I'm starting to think its not even possible to see an SSD through VMware on xpenology.  I appreciate the help, though!

[Is it possible to use a Silverstone PCIe expansion card to use NVMe as cache?]

15 minutes ago, IG-88 said:

 

 

thats documented in synologys faq, afaik it needs two drives (will run in raid1 i guess) for using it as cache

 

 

right, I can raid together my NVME and SSD as a volume... I'm just saying neither show up as SSD either before or after.  Both just show up as HDD.  I must be missing a step somewhere in vmware...

[Is it possible to use a Silverstone PCIe expansion card to use NVMe as cache?]

3 hours ago, IG-88 said:

 

you could format the nvme as vmfs and use it as fast virtulal disk

in theory you can mark a virual disk as ssd to make it look like a ssd in the vm,

 

 

I can't find much info on the vmfs format, I'll have to keep hunting.

 

  I'm also trying just a basic SATA SSD (850 evo) to use as cache until I find a way to use the NVMe.  But I can't even get it to show up as an SSD.  Just shows up as HDD and the Cache Advisor is grey out... any thoughts?

[Is it possible to use a Silverstone PCIe expansion card to use NVMe as cache?]

3 hours ago, IG-88 said:

nvme is a completely new way if having a device and its not supported in the models we can use for xpenology,

 

 

 

Thats disappointing :/ thanks for the help though.

This is probably a silly question: but perhaps running Xpenology via VMware could bypass this? Since the 3.0 kernel will recognize NVMe perhaps Xpenology will just see it a drive if loaded this way?

[Is it possible to use a Silverstone PCIe expansion card to use NVMe as cache?]

I bought this card and a 960EVO NVMe to use as cache.  I'm not finding any info on compatibility and NVMe cache via expansion cards.... Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[VMWARE: "nvme disks are not supported by other linux 2.6x kernel 64-bit"]

Just in case someone else stumbles upon this issue:

 

I used 3.0 instead.  That worked.

[VMWARE: "nvme disks are not supported by other linux 2.6x kernel 64-bit"]

So I'm setting up physical disks in vmware Workstation pro and realized NVMe is not available. I was hoping to use the NVMe for read/write cache... Should I have chosen a different "base" OS when setting things up?  I hope I didn't just waist 200$ on VM workstation pro......

 

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.