berwhale

Hi Spigot, Thanks for the info. Your mix of VMs is pretty similar to what I want to run. BTW, I had to set the Intel NIC (vmnic0) to '1000 Full' rather than 'Auto Negotiate' as it would set itself at '10 Full' otherwise. This is the integrated Intel I217-LM, rather than the quad card I've added - not really played with that yet. Update: My quad port Intel NIC appears to be fully supported in ESXi 6.0... http://www.vmware.com/resources/compati ... 3&vcl=true And so is the on-board one... http://www.vmware.com/resources/compati ... 6&vcl=true

Thanks +1

Hi, I've just bought a Dell T20 PowerEdge Server which is configured with the following hardware: Intel Xeon E3-1225V3 / 3.2 GHz 24GB ECC RAM Samsung EVO 850 250GB SSD WD Black 2.5" 750GB HDD 1TB 3.5" HDD (came with server, not intending to use this) Marvell 88SE9215 4 port PCI-e x4 SATAIII Controller Intel 4 port GbE NIC (it's actually a Sun branded card that a friend gave me) My intention is to virtualize the functionality of the Xpenology boxes in my sig plus play around with some other VMs. I'm familiar with virtualisation, but haven't played around with the nuts and bolts of ESXi before. I've installed Vsphere 6.0 to the SSD which is also available as a data store along with the WD Black - these drives fit nicely in the ODD bay at the top of the T20. I've already created a test VM with DSM5.2 and played about with adding disks (including using PCI pass-through of the Marvel controller to the 1TB disk). I plan to setup something like this: DSM VM 1: File Server (no other app packages) - 2x vCPU, 2GB RAM - Move 4x 3TB DSM disks from old server and connect via PCI pass-through of the Marvel controller. Also pass-through one of the Intel NICs DSM VM 2: File Transfer (Transmission, SABNZBD+, Couch Potato, etc. with VPN enabled)- 2x vCPU, 1GB RAM - Pass-through one of the Intel NICs DSM VM 3: Media Server (Plex incl. transcoding) - 4x vCPU, 2GB RAM - Pass-through one of the Intel NICs Does this sound OK? Are there any issues with using PCI pass-through and is it worth doing? Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated! Thanks, Paul.

Hi, Did you ever find any decent information on this? I've just purchased a Dell PowerEdge T20 (Xeon CPU and 24GB RAM) and I'm looking to virtualize my ageing Xpenology boxes on to there along with some other stuff I'd like to play with. I've considered ESXi, Hyper-V and XenServer - XenServer looks like the best one to play with as it's open source and all the management tools are free. Thanks.

DSM 5.2 is not yet supported by XPEnoboot. You need to downgrade your box back to 5.1. 5055 is the latest version supported by XPEnoboot. To downgrade you need to edit the VERSION file on your system to make appear to be an older version than 5055 - otherwise the Install/Upgrade to 5055 will not work. As M0ps mentions there are other threads that discuss this in detail. Good luck.

I've tested the upgrade from 5022 to 5055 on my test VM, seems to work fine... viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6054

I've tested the upgrade on my Hyper-V VM (I run my main servers on physical boxes)... Steps to test... 1. Shutdown DSM. 2. Replaced the old bootloader with the new ISO in the VM settings (this is equivalent to creating a new USB key for a physical installation) 3. Booted VM and selected Install/Upgrade in the bootloader. 4. Accessed DSM web interface from SynologyAssistant, selected Install/Upgrade, then Manual and pointed it at the PAT file download from above. 5. Install progressed smoothly and everything looks fine in the resulting DSM install. I'm not sure if I needed to do the install/upgrade or if I could have let DSM upgrade itself, but the above process worked. You can download the 5055 PAT file and new bootloader here: http://xpenology.me/downloads/ Regards, Paul.

Are you suggesting that this new version can be installed via the standard Synology update process?

1. You need the custom BIOS to allow internal SATA/eSATA to run in SATA mode. 2. You need a 2x 3.5" to 5.25" adapter (I used one similar to this: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/15856 ... 34c273s852) 3. Run an eSata to SATA cable from the back of the server, through a PCI blanking plate to the 2nd drive in the ODD bay.

The eSATA port on the N54L doesn't support port multiplication. I don't think anyone has found a PCI-e SATA card with port multiplication that works reliably with DSM (happy to be corrected!). By the way, you can easily fit two 3.5" drives in the ODD bay, four if you try hard enough.

Another small case with 8+ bays to consider... http://www.fractal-design.com/home/prod ... s/node-804 It's quite a bit cheaper than the Silverstone, but doesn't have the nice drive trays.

Judging by your setup, it looks like you're after something small and neat. You could buy a DS380 + a cheap 4 port SATA card and sell the old case, the external cases and the eSata card. http://www.silentpcreview.com/SilverStone_DS380

This *might* be relevant: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/656115 Did you start with a very small volume size?

If you search the forum for 'port multiplier' you'll find that someone mentions that they have a Sil 3132 based card working.

"Tempo SATA E4P, E4i, X4P, and X4i are supported under Red Hat Enterprise 4 Linux with Marvell (TSATAII chip set) drivers. The Marvell Linux driver supports direct connect drives but not port multipliers, so there is no compatibility with the Fusion D4Q, Fusion D5P, Fusion R4Q and Fusion R4P storage systems. As in Windows, drives must be connected at boot time." FROM: http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb ... ction=b106

Quick question - why do you need to transcode files and not play them with DirectPlay? You may be better off upgrading your client(s) and spending less on the NAS, the electricity it uses and minimizing the heat and noise it generates.

The only other NAS I can find with that CPU (actually a SoC) is the Western Digital My Book World Edition II and it's performance is far from stellar... http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/index.ph ... =&chart=87 (it's the 4th one from the bottom). I think it's unlikely that you'll get DSM to work on it (though happy to be wrong!) and it's performance will be very poor if you do. For comparison, both the servers in my .sig have very modest specs and both achieve over 100MB/sec CIFs file transfers - although they are running 4 and 5 drive SHR arrays which will help performance a great deal.

Plex doesn't support GPU encoding on any platform.

Cool, np. BTW, I have to run Transmission on another box, I can't get Plex to work with a VPN connection enabled (actually, it works for a while before it dies - it's something to do with Plex Pass not being able to access the box).

This thread help me get the perms correct for SB and CP... https://couchpota.to/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1477

You can plug your USB drive in a windows machine and use device manager/view resource to get the VID and PID of the USB drive. You can achieve the same thing in an SSH session by typing: cat /proc/bus/usb/devices

Works a treat, thanks.

What's the file type?

I can confirm the update failure. The error message is: "Fail to update the file. The file is probably corrupt."

If somebody knows how to fix the BIOS reset issue, then they should post the fix in the BIOS reset issue thread, not here!