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Tutorial: Install DSM 6.2 on ESXi 6.7


luchuma

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Question,

 

I have a fujitsu D3643 mainboard with nvme disk of 500 GB and an 2,5 inch 5 TB sata drive.

Installed esx 6.7 and xpenology on the nvme.
I want the data of the synology to be stored on the 2,5 inch sata drive.

 

How can I fix this.
What I'd like to manage is the data drive going to sleep when nothing happens.

 

Rabski

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39 minutes ago, Rabski said:

I have a fujitsu D3643 mainboard with nvme disk of 500 GB and an 2,5 inch 5 TB sata drive.

Installed esx 6.7 and xpenology on the nvme.
I want the data of the synology to be stored on the 2,5 inch sata drive.

 

How can I fix this.
What I'd like to manage is the data drive going to sleep when nothing happens.

 

Best chance for that is to do a passthrough of the SATA controller on the motherboard to your VM so that DSM can directly manage the disk.

 

There are issues with spurious/unimportant log messages being frequently written to the logs which inhibit hibernation. It's a bit of a chore to fix, but see these links:

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/29581-suppress-virtual-disk-smart-errors-from-varlogmessages/

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/34121-hibernation-doesn’t-work

Edited by flyride
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  • 3 weeks later...

there is a limit of 12 drives in 3615/17 and when you 1st drive is "sda" it will deduce the total number of disks in a raid to 11

but my question here would be why using that number of disks anyway, why not one big xx TB vdisk without raid?

you will have to backup anyway and usually the underlying storage already has raid protection

only if using rdm whole disk or path trough a entire controller you would use ore disks

 

918+ comes with a 16 disk default but needs min 4th gen intel cpu to start

also the config file synoinfo.conf can manually be changed for more disks but that has other problems when updating so its not a fire and forget solution

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12 hours ago, IG-88 said:

there is a limit of 12 drives in 3615/17 and when you 1st drive is "sda" it will deduce the total number of disks in a raid to 11

but my question here would be why using that number of disks anyway, why not one big xx TB vdisk without raid?

you will have to backup anyway and usually the underlying storage already has raid protection

only if using rdm whole disk or path trough a entire controller you would use ore disks

 

918+ comes with a 16 disk default but needs min 4th gen intel cpu to start

also the config file synoinfo.conf can manually be changed for more disks but that has other problems when updating so its not a fire and forget solution

 

Thanks @IG-88

 

We thought that using 12 disks would be easier to get a notification if something is wrong with the RAID/Disk. Although the RAID card does offer better protection, we won't get any notification if something is wrong with it. Guess I'll have to go for one volume then.

 

Cheers

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2 hours ago, DiegoVieira said:

We thought that using 12 disks would be easier to get a notification if something is wrong with the RAID/Disk. Although the RAID card does offer better protection, we won't get any notification if something is wrong with it. Guess I'll have to go for one volume then.

the best solution depends on hardware structure of the system and the goals, backup strategy, ...

in a esxi environment its usually better to have the storage as vmfs and have the storage divided to the vm's dynamically, the flexibility can offer more options

if there are plans to have the dsm nas transferred to baremetal it might be interesting to use rdm or controller passtrough as it gives the option to transfer the disks as they are to a new barematel system

dsm really sucks when it comes to monitoring something different then ahci and lsis sas (and even lsi sas only works 100% with 3615/17)

 

in general you would not use software raid with dsm when the underlying esxi storage already has that protection and with the limits in disk count and hardware monitoring in dsm it might be better to handle disks and monitoring in esxi

as its pretty complex there is not a single best solution that fits all

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Hi guys,

 

It's been a while since I did an install on ESXi and I've forgotten what to do for MAC addresses.

 

Do I let ESXi assign a MAC address to the network adapter and then put that into grub.cfg? Or do I concoct a MAC address from say the MAC address of the server and put that into both the virtual machine config and grub.cfg?

 

Thanks

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Hi all and merry X-mas.

Successfully got my N40L running on ESXI 6.5 upgraded to DSM 6.2.3 with this tutorial, disks using RDM. Thanks a lot!

 

But even after reading tons of posts, I am unclear about what are the best, most performant settings in regards to the RDM disks and the controllers and settings to be used?

1. loader synoboot disk is on SATA 0:0 with disk mode "dependent" -> could this also be "independent non-persistent" to avoid overwrites?

 

2. data storage disks are on SCSI 0:0 to 0:2 as LSI Logic SAS controller, no BUS sharing. Disk as "independent-persistent" and disk compatibility "physical"

-> is the SCSI "VM Paravirtual" controller having any advantages?

-> any advantages/disadvantages using a SATA instead of the SCSI controller for the RDM disks?

 

Wondering if any of the options/combinations gives the best disk performance? Is there an easy answer?

 

Thanks for your support!

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1. The loader is modified during updates (and you may want to be able to edit it while DSM is running), so it needs to be writable.

2. DSM tries to use the drives as SATA regardless.  Some combinations of SATA/SAS/SCSI emulation for RDM will result in the drives not being seen, difficulties manipulating Storage Pools or Volumes, or differences in SMART behavior.

 

Most are using SATA emulation.  You'll just have to try it and see what works best for you.  You should be able to change between boots without having any impact to the Storage Pool.

 

RDM is better performing than the same disk syndicated as a VMDK by about 10%.  I don't think the I/O dialect has much impact on ultimate performance.

 

 

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3 hours ago, flyride said:

1. The loader is modified during updates (and you may want to be able to edit it while DSM is running), so it needs to be writable.

2. DSM tries to use the drives as SATA regardless.  Some combinations of SATA/SAS/SCSI emulation for RDM will result in the drives not being seen, difficulties manipulating Storage Pools or Volumes, or differences in SMART behavior.

 

Most are using SATA emulation.  You'll just have to try it and see what works best for you.  You should be able to change between boots without having any impact to the Storage Pool.

 

RDM is better performing than the same disk syndicated as a VMDK by about 10%.  I don't think the I/O dialect has much impact on ultimate performance.

 

 

Thanks for your feedback, I would be interested in reliable SMART data within DSM, which controller/settings are recommended here, or is it really trial and error?

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22 hours ago, flyride said:

For best SMART results, you will want to passthrough the entire controller.

as far as I have read, the N40L has no controller which can be passed through....

I'll stick with SATA for now, however the LSI Logic SAS did work as well, I recently just had issues with the Paravirtual as often after a reboot 1 disc was lost from the RAID and had to be put in place again with "repair"

Cheers.

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I have virtual machine DS 918+ with DSM 6.2.3, and two problems:

- When I tried update to DS 6.2.3 Update 3, stop update and show the message “file corrupted”. The file is download to control panel or manual .pat with the same issue.

- I want DSM Virtual with Virtual Machine Manager, but I can’t power on virtual machine. The issue is not memory enought. i think is not possible virtualize one virtual machine over other virtual machine, isn’t it?

Thanks

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On 12/21/2020 at 6:33 AM, luchuma said:

 

MAC of phisical server cannot be duplicated

You can use generator or let esxi to generate mac.

I was thinking of increasing the real MAC address and putting it into both the grub.cfg and into the VM config before booting the VM. Otherwise I have to let ESXi create the MAC addresses (does it do it before booting the VM?), then edit grub.cfg and create the boot image.

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I am currently running a DS3617xs installation on ESXi7 , and I'm wondering is there any process/instruction to follow if I wanted to move the physical disks into another xpenology VM with a different loader (e.g. DS918+) ? Since the instruction indicates that every initial start of a new installation would require to format the disk contents, where I want to retain all if not most of the data/configuration from the existing installation. 

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Hello everyone, after days of testing and trying again today I managed to install (with Luchuma instructions) version 6.2 (on virtualbox) of the DSM, I then updated the DSM to version 6.2.3 and everything went correctly, the only thing I've seen for now is that it doesn't make me create a disk volume, the storage pool does but not the volume; I put 3 discs in raid 5 (for testing), what problem can there be ???? thanks

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I'm trying all day to install version 6.2 on VMware® Workstation Pro.. I followed this guide, following all the steps successfully. The step "after 10 minutes reboot" is counting down to 00:00 and then nothing happens. I can manually reboot but than the DiskStation cant be found.  The reboot takes you back to the screen "intro, this mod is brought by you"  

 

Reading the comments in this section, I assume there is an issue with the network card.  The vmx config: ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

Edited by JBos
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