dynax

I agree. This is away to shoot ourselves in the foot. Synology can tell the fake S/N and MAC combination and where those come from (while using QC). When they realize the "market lost", they'll encrypt the DSM better. There are many free DNS services that works faster than QC.

I should clarify this: Moving data from one volume to the next should be done by "Share Folder" Click on the Data directory then "Edit" then under the "Location" use the pull down menu to move that directory to a new volume. You should be able to move everything over to the new volume this way then delete the old volume. the current loader is a dynamic hack, not compiled from a released source code. Upgrading beyond DSM 6 may not be as simple as before.

That would work. When you add the HDD back to expand Btrfs volume, do it one HD at a time. What you are doing is not migration. Migration is in-place conversion.

1) Is there any performance loss when utilizing ESXi for DSM? I've run enough benchmark and test to be confident that there's virtually no performance loss. In fact, there's a "net" overall performance gain in I/O because all the guest VM that connected to the same virtual switch can talk to the DSM at 10Gbit speed. ESXi also give me the ability to add drives to DSM for temp volume (utilizing SSD space in my datastore) for cache/scratch when needed. Flexibility and remote management capability are the keys here. 2) Anyone had any trouble with DSM not starting as expected when virtualized? Any issues that may crop up? No issue. My ESXi datastore storage are all SSD so DSM loads very fast from boot up. 3) RDM vs pass-through? I've traditionally used pass-through but having looked at flexraid a while back which suggested RDM was the most flexible approach, what do people prefer and why? Pass-through. PCI pass-through with HBA controller. It's much more reliable that way. If something is going wrong with the ESXi host, I can pull the drives/controller and plug those into another ESXi host and have everything up and running in no time. In fact, I have spare HBA controllers on my other ESXi hosts so there's no need to pull the controller. The drive order doesn't matter so you/I don't have to keep track which drive connect to which SATA/SAS ports. SMART data are also available with PCI pass-through. 4) If I use the array for VM storage, I assume that ESXi will reconnect to the array very quickly once its booted first? Shouldn't be an issue. I don't store my VM on DSM. I backup my VMs onto DSM via Acronis vAppliance running on ESXi host. I should state that my important VM are stored in my Intel S3700 SSDs which I trust 100%. Now so more advanced case questions; My setup also contains vcenter and vsan so I cluster the hosts. 5) Any body run clusters with DRS/HA? Any issues there? I don't use HA. I figure ESXi host with server grade hardware should be more reliable than bare-metal. I didn't use redundancy setup for bare-metal, there's no need to start with DSM as guest VM for me. I don't have any need for DRS. 6) My primary VM storage array will be the vSAN once I get enough SSDs, presume no issues there too? Shouldn't be. Another advantage of ESXi is power consumption. It's not just about saving $$ in the electric bill, it's the requirement on UPS to have the severs up and running. I have a bunch of must-be-on VMs anyway, so move DSM into the same host saves me around 60 watts or so. I've had 4-5 hrs power outage before so my important VM and DSM are on a single host that can last 9+ hrs on UPS just in case.

Try this img for bare metal. Your Nic is in the support list, it should work. https://mega.nz/#!E1JnjJZa!fDv55PFxgH0i ... VHvT3YpUZo There are 2 places to load the drivers (at boot time and after boot time). I am wondering if anyone is looking at the later approach. People used it too add a secondary unsupported Nic to DSM 5.x previously (but no one has tried that with a primary Nic)

when you get to that screen, go to http://find.synology.com (or synology assistant) to continue with the setup. Either way brtf is not working on my boot file. See my above post for a better more complete setup.

I finally got DSM 6.0 working properly on ESXi 5.5. Brtf works w/o manual re-mount. Snapshot works. vmware-tool works (community packages). Update via web GUI to 6.0u1 also works. I had to use PCI pass-through to get the NIC to work properly. Make sure your NIC is in the support list. Mine is 82574L There are a few waiting periods so DSM takes a while to come up. Just keep an eye on your CPU usage, when you see the CPU begins to get utilized then the loading process is almost done. Hardware version is 10. Boot drive id IDE 0:0. In ESXi 5.5u1, you'll need to use PCI pass-thru for the supported NIC. Point this IDE drive to the vmdk file. Then upload the pat file for installation, then use the web gui to update to u1. On my test machine, I have another smaller SATA drive (don't forget the SATA part in VM hardware) to install DSM onto for testing. vmdk: https://mega.nz/#!Vl5zAZaK!f3vf8gK1NfQE ... MK8udUT5J4 pat file: https://mega.nz/#!5xQTwZ4C!yyxSLcGPHHZ8 ... kzHWAm5zvs setup screen shots: https://mega.nz/#!98p11YbS!l55cnw-3G6d8 ... pWle1zh3uQ

Where can we check the full list of compatible hardware? In addition to the network card, what would be the other crucial hardware components to make this work? I take it the cpu and raid controller would be in that list. Only the network card that is giving people trouble. CPU and raid controller (must be in IT mode if you use an add-in card) are invisible to the OS so DSM doesn't care - note how xpenology always mis-id the CPU/core? it's because the value strings are hard coded, not read off of the actual CPU.

Can you post your boot vmdk file? Thanks

You need CPU support for DirectPath I/O - a Xeon or an i5+ I think. Xeon and i3 (not i5). Intel yielded to HP/DELL/Lenovo and enable direct I/O with an i3 CPU so the manufacturers can sell cheap servers for small businesses.

This is a slightly different file for use with ESXi as an image file (img). I didn't know how to properly share in mega. I put in an updated link w/o password. Minor changes such as extending the menu wait time, let DSM loads with both Run or Install options, first HDD starts at HD 1 etc. btrfs still won't work until the source code is release for proper recompile/built. Update via the web GUI to DSM 6U1 works fine (with my very limited testing on my ESXi 5.5 -- convert the img to vmdk file first).

PSWD? Sorry, first time using mega. Here's the updated link https://mega.nz/#!w9RkULAR!3_Hhvp7yX3kc ... kRBzxw1ONY

- What does not support virtualbox? https://yadi.sk/i/bcgMvmLJtHcAn You won't be able to use the new file system. it "works" for you because you use a modified xpe boot image which loads the drivers (Install option). If you use the "Run" option, you won't be able to load network driver so the NAS can't connect to your network.

I put the img together and uploaded it here: https://mega.nz/#!w9RkULAR Updated link w/o key: https://mega.nz/#!w9RkULAR!3_Hhvp7yX3kc ... kRBzxw1ONY works fine under esxi 5.5. After install the pat 7393 file, you can use the GUI to update to DSM6.0 U1. I wouldn't call this working properly because brtfs doesn't work (everything does). Use Install to Install and Run to Run. You have 30 sec to make a selection. Edit: Sorry, first time using mega, I didn't realize there's a key for sharing. Here's the updated link https://mega.nz/#!w9RkULAR!3_Hhvp7yX3kc ... kRBzxw1ONY

Something is not right. I have a 10gbit connection and have no issue receiving 150MBytes/sec each from 2 users concurrently. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Did you try ffmpeg? You'll have to ssh to the NAS and use the command line. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I personally like qnap better than synology. I like qmanager and qmobile more than synology equivalent iOS apps. Virtualization and the ability to have download station to use a proxy (and only the download station) are unique features of Qnap. Would love to be able to run qnap on a stronger hardware with ecc ram support. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

for nanoboot, it's under /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg

Hello What bootloader did you use? Can you try nanoboot? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

When you double-click the xpe-box in Synology Assistant, it should give you the option to upgrade/migrate to a new DSM version via a pat file. Minor update (update 1, update 2 etc), I use the manual update via the control panel (with the sed commands). I am only a few days into this experiment but I've not have any issue in update/upgrade the xpe-box.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing in the last few days. To me, it's not really a solution. I want a separate app for security reason. On the iOS (jailbrake) I can lock individual app with a password. My NAS password is both long and hard to type in the touch screen because of special character and I can't use the "remember me" option for obvious reason, I cant lock the browser either. I looks like I may need to get another browser just for checking xpenology box and then lock that browser instead. Thank you.

Thank you I’ve just completed the xpenology installation on my test computer Dell T110 (Xeon , 4gig ECC) using nanoboot and everything runs great. I’ve always been a Qnap users with 3 models and always wondering what’s the big deal about Synology app that ppl have been talking about. I’ve been satisfied with the Qnap App on the iOS, QMobile and Qmanager to be specific. Qmanager has been great, it give me the status of the NASs, process running, App status (such as backup, download), bandwidth, ram, disk status, system logs and current connected Users etc. I can’t find an equivalent app on Synology NAS. Am I missing anything? “DS finder” is very basic. The only way to get system status is to use the browser. So far I can’t see the advantage of Synology over Qnap in term of mobile apps. DS video/audio etc is about the same as Qmobile (which has both video and music built in). When using DS video to play an mkv file with srt caption and airplay to a TV. The caption is shown on the iOS device, not the TV (pictures and sound are still shown on the TV). I must give a big thumb up to the developers. Is there a link for donation to the xpenology effort? I saw the link to nanoboot but my work firewall blocks that link