VirtualBox in windows - access to drives

[arden]

Hi,

 

So, I've been reading around this forum but am still trying to get to grips with the best approach. My DS2411+ has died to say the least, so I'm trying to continue to use the case with drives and adding a new motherboard.

 

My plan is to have Windows 11 on the motherboard and VirtualBox running DSM, giving it half the RAM and CPU (16GB and 6 cores).

My storage is 16 x 4TB SATA drives. I was trying to use HP SmartArray P400 & P812 raid cards for this, but they don’t like my motherboard, so just using SATA extension cards and have 2 x 8 port x4 cards from amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B098QPBCBJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

The idea of not going down the ESXI route is I'd like to have windows as an option too and the DSM for continuing to have the NAS environment I’m so use too. After reading lots, I see Synology really just does software raid, so dropping the hardware raid wasn't really a loss. But as DSM will be in VirtualBox, how might I best access the drives?

 

Do I need to create new vhdx drives in VirtualBox for each drive? and let DSM manage its own riad? If I go down this route, I won't be able to access the drives via windows unless via SMB, so I was also thinking another option is creating the software raid in windows and somehow letting DSM access that as its volume too, via shared folder even in VirtualBox or mounting a share in DSM? that way both windows and DSM have access to the storage.

 

Like I said, this is just what is going through my head at current, welcome to some advice/guidance as to the best approach here for best performance in read/writes.

 

Thanks,

arden

 

 

 

Edited January 13, 2023 by arden
added hyperlink/spellings