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Issues with virtual disks in VMware.


SteinerKD

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Hi!
Just discobered XPEnology after looking at Synology units for years but being unable to afford them so now a happy camper. I'm waiting for a free raid card from a friend (and possible a server to make a bare metal install on). Meanwhile I'm trying it out and playing around a bit and I've noticed an issue that confounds me a bit.
At first I created 4 virtual disks of 5 GB each, in RAID 0 (should get close to full capacity) the available space was 1.2 GB, so 18 GB short, that's quite hefty.
In my current install I had 3 virtual disks of 10 GB each. I know RAID 5 loses one disk to parity, but that should still leave me with close to 20 GB storage, but all I get out is 10 GB. I converted the RAID 5 to Yet another 10 GB virtual drive and that operation went just fine.
My question is, what's with the low available space compared to disk volume? Is this an issue due to running it in VMWare with virtual disk or will I see similar low volumes on real steel with actual disks as well?

I still haven't decided if I'm going to run XPEnology in a virtual machine on my current server (Windows based) or do a direct metal install on a dedicated machine.

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why not checking old school, boot a live linux (like ubuntu or a recover/rescue system)  and have a look at the disks in question

you will see every disk contains 3 partitions

1st the dsm system, 2nd swap, 3rd data (raid x)

the first two are raid1 over all disks in the system, that what dsam does when in "initializes" a disks ~4.4GB reserved for dsm system and swap

that way the dsm system keeps always availibe as long as one disk is working, thet the way synology designed it

Edited by IG-88
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1 hour ago, IG-88 said:

why not checking old school, boot a live linux (like ubuntu or a recover/rescue system)  and have a look at the disks in question

you will see every disk contains 3 partitions

1st the dsm system, 2nd swap, 3rd data (raid x)

the first two are raid1 over all disks in the system, that what dsam does when in "initializes" a disks ~4.4GB reserved for dsm system and swap

that way the dsm system keeps always availibe as long as one disk is working, thet the way synology designed it

Thank you for that explanation, so basically the very low available space is just down to my virtual disks being very small so that the reserved system bit eats it all up?

I also tried to use the "Install for VMWare" option in the bootloader but that gives me an unusable system system claiming there are no disks attached, I have to use the bare metal option to get it running.

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5 hours ago, SteinerKD said:

Thank you for that explanation, so basically the very low available space is just down to my virtual disks being very small so that the reserved system bit eats it all up?

 

 

yes, on a 4TB drive you will hardly miss 4GB

 

5 hours ago, SteinerKD said:


I also tried to use the "Install for VMWare" option in the bootloader but that gives me an unusable system system claiming there are no disks attached, I have to use the bare metal option to get it running.

 

afair the disks in vmware are supposed to be scsi disks, maybe yours were sata disks?

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