A few good questions...

[Stuart]

XPEnology users, developers, gurus:

 

I work in IT and have a small home lab and have been considering to setup a NAS (I am also reviewing openmediavault too), but hear that Synology is the 800lb guerilla in this space. Let me say, I am not opposed to buying a Synology NAS, I just (initially) wish to kick the tires on it and see what it has. If I can build a Synology based NAS using an HP microserver or the like I am open to that also as it would afford me far greater customization and capability (see below).

 

I am a single user that would use it for general storage, backups of ProxMox images, ISO storage (and ostensibly a PXE server if it can do that easily), tftp service, etc...

 

How painful is it to get XPEnology running under ProxMox? If imagine a server built with ProxMox to run XPEnology and pfSense on it (both as VMs under ProxMox). If I did this, I would imagine obtaining a 4 port Ethernet PCI board that is compatible with ProxMox and then have a nice environment for both purposes (I have read HP N40L micro servers are recommended these days as 'the best of inexpensive').

 

I also read that you need to generate a serial number and MAC address pair for most useful features to work, is that correct? What is the story on this?

 

Please note, I would intend all of these questions relative to DSM 7.1.x of course. If I bought a Synology NAS, can it also use devices available via iSCSI? How functionally problematic is it to use something like an HP N40L microserver vice buying an older Synology NAS? How old of a Synology NAS can I buy before current DSM versions will not work or it goes out of support or that?

 

Thanks in advance and do stay safe from the thugs, healthy, and free of the Virus.

 

Stuart

 

[Polanskiman]

Hello and welcome,

 

Post has been edited to avoid further escalation. Please avoid reference to unconfirmed information.

[Polanskiman]

On 10/14/2022 at 10:39 PM, Stuart said:

I also read that you need to generate a serial number and MAC address pair for most useful features to work, is that correct? What is the story on this?

That's done by the loader. Nothing you need to do specifically. And no you don't need a valid pair to have most features to work. In fact DSM will work with say 98% of all features with a non-original sn/mac pair. Some of the features that will not work without a valid pair (valid, as in coming from an original Synology NAS), will be features that involve Synology servers and few others such as Quickconnect, Advanced Media Extentions or additing additional licences to Surveillance Station. Truth is you don't really need those as they can be replaced by other alternatives, at least for the case of Quickconnect by setting up a DDNS. For the Advanced Media Extensions I don't think there is a way around that. Anyhow, please read the FAQs, that will be a good starting point: https://xpenology.com/forum/forum/83-faq-start-here/

 

On 10/14/2022 at 10:39 PM, Stuart said:

How old of a Synology NAS can I buy before current DSM versions will not work or it goes out of support or that?

As an example, I have a DS214+ which can be considered as ancient. Yet it can be updated to DSM 7.1. I keep it at 6.2.4 as this is a company NAS and I see no need to update. In fact even Synology states the following:

Quote

 

1. Your Synology NAS may not notify you of this DSM update because of the following reasons. If you want to update your DSM to this version now, please click here to manually update it. Only Synology NAS with DSM 7.1 installed can be updated to this version.

The update is not available in your region yet. The update is expected to be available for all regions within the next few days, although the time of release in each region may vary slightly.

Your DSM is working fine without having to update. The system evaluates service statuses and system settings to determine whether it needs to update to this version.

 

 

For questions relating to virtualization I will let others chime in as that is not my forte.

[kekesed97]

On 10/14/2022 at 10:39 PM, Stuart said:

How painful is it to get XPEnology running under ProxMox? If imagine a server built with ProxMox to run XPEnology and pfSense on it (both as VMs under ProxMox).

 

Hi Stuart! Many users has implemented Xpenology in various VM solutions. ESXi, ProxMox, Workstation Pro, Virtualbox, the guides are out there. I personally uses Workstation Pro as a test bench before applying updates to my real machines. Hypervisor is hard to get around with.

 

TFTP and PXE shouldn't be painful to implement. I never implemented one because I don't need it, but this article here explains how to implement PXE boot.

https://kb.synology.com/en-id/DSM/tutorial/How_to_implement_PXE_with_Synology_NAS#x_anchor_id9