I know that quite often I can be as thick at two planks of wood. I am totally lost here.
I have downloaded the XPEnoboot.x64 and it contains 3 files. There is an img, iso and vmdk file. My objective is to give this a try and figure it out. I own 3 Synology boxes and just want to make up a 4th box that is just going to basicaly be a big disk that I can use to backup the other units to.
My thought was that as I have a mac right now with VMware Fusion, that I could make a VM to test out the process and learn on, then when I am ready and comfortable, go out and buy an inexpensive PC and make up a large drive case unit. They have some really nice 12bay 4u cases with 12 hotswap bays for $250 near me. I take it I will need some intel bases mb with the SATA ports, and add a 2 more 4port sata cards to bring me up to my 12, and the XPnology resides on a USB drive that boots.
So by my plan I need to get it working on VMware Fusion first.
I can make a VM and boot from the XPEnoboot.iso file and it brings up grub fine with 3 options. All of them boot fine and end up with me with a login prompt: and no idea what goes next. If I run the DSAssistant, all I see are my own 3 Synology boxes and the VM is nowhere to be seen.
OK. I figured out that I needed to remove the SCSI disk and add in an IDE disk or two.. now I am seeing the server.
So, I will ask part 2, Is there any specific hardware that is required as I will be going out to buy this. I cannot get one of these elusive N40L units are there are none around me and really i just need a lowest cost solution I can put into a 12 bay box and load up with my misc SATA drives to give me a honking big drive.