Xpenology in Hyper-V thread

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MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
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NYC
Hey everyone.

I am starting a thread on making Xpenology work on Hyper-V. Why? You can run Windows 8.1 Pro as a host, or even Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. One machine. Awesome NAS. Flexibility of a VM host or a Windows RDP machine, especially when aggregating networking.

The guide I used was posted in another thread but based on the ESXi version here.

Going to keep a little log of the steps:
1. Download the nanoboot.img file
2. Convert nanoboot.img to hyper-v vhd
3. Make a VM and attach nanoboot.vhd to the VM IDE O - This will not work on the SCSI controller.
4. Take drives and attach to the SCSI controller. You can use hyper-v disk pass-through guide or test with dynamically expanding virtual disks. I would recommend testing with the vhdx files for now.
5. Boot the VM
6. Select upgrade DSM
8. Select a version. I am working with DSM 5.0-4482

That worked and let everything install. When it game time to reboot, I've now got a black screen and blinking cursor.

Anyone get further than this?
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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I have a play Xpenology Hyper V vm. I didn't kept good note on the installation.
I just looked up my Xpenology vm setting.
My vm is set to boot off xpenology_5.0-4458_bootloader.iso , boot from CD , I did not covert *.img to vhd file.
I treated the boot CD like the boot USB stick in a real bare metal machine, the boot CD is always mounted.
It worked for me.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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I have a play Xpenology Hyper V vm. I didn't kept good note on the installation.
I just looked up my Xpenology vm setting.
My vm is set to boot off xpenology_5.0-4458_bootloader.iso , boot from CD , I did not covert *.img to vhd file.
I treated the boot CD like the boot USB stick in a real bare metal machine, the boot CD is always mounted.
It worked for me.
What happens when you reboot the VM? Do you lose settings?
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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The Xpenology vm was assigned couple of vdisk, the installer put the OS on the vdisk.
The ISO image behaved like the boot USB stick.
 

Hank C

Active Member
Jun 16, 2014
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how is the performance of the xpenology in hyper-v compare to vmware?
Will increase the RAM increase the performance? Does synology have ram cache?
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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I have not done any performance testing with either virtual Xpenology on hyper-v or vmware platform.
I have 6 bare metal Xpenology servers. My experience is that Xpenology will run on any dual core cpu ( cpu from Intel G530 and AMD E1200 up )
with 2GB mem, it will have no problem saturating single 1 gigabit network.

For my 10gb link Xpenology, I used a old AMD A4 dual core cpu , 4gb mem, benchmark test show speed in the area around 800 to 900 MB/s.
Since the hardware are old and cheap, I haven't bother with performance tweaking.
Here is the approx price breakdown of my 10gb server not including hard drives
AMD A4 around $25 ( purchased in 2012) , or Intel G530 ($25 today on Ebay )
Mohterboard with 6 SATA3 ports around $30 ( purchased in 2012)
2 x 2gb memory
10gb Mellanox Connectx-2 card $35
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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I was using raid zero of 4 x 128gb SSD ,
May be later, I could run some ATTIO against my 6x3TB raid5
 

Hank C

Active Member
Jun 16, 2014
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please test the raid 5 config. I will have a similar configuration in hyper-v
 

HellDiverUK

Active Member
Jul 16, 2014
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All the boot ISO/stick does is load a bootloader, which then fires up DSM off the drive(s). There's nothing modified on the boot stick as far as I can tell.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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My home lab setup
Server side
Xpenology DSM 5.0-4458 Update 2 with Gnoboot, ( newer Nanoboot doe not support Mellanox card )
AMD A4-3200 , MSI A75 motherboard, 4gb mem, 6x3 tb seagate 7200rpm raid5, 1 Mellanox ConnectX ( not ConnectX-2) 10gb card

Testing client side
Fresh Windows 2012R2 bare metal install , no tweaks ( only tweaks from Mellanox driver default install )
I5-2500k, with MSI Z68A motherboard, 8gb mem, 1 local 2.5" 5200rpm OS boot disk, 1 Mellanox ConnectX-2 10gb card
Mellanox driver version MLNX_VPI_WinOF-4_60_All_win2012R2_x64

Let me start saying that I believed benchmark testing is like sugar, only get you high and not anything useful, purpose is for comparison.

I ran ATTO disk benchmark because it is easy
Map network drive with 10gb link
Target size 128KB to 9192KB
Total Length 2GB ( too small file size for real world, ATTO won't go higher than 2GB )
Force Write Access and Direct I/O
Overlapped I/O with Queue depth 4

128KB write 419688 (419MB/s ), read 1125212 (1125MB/s)
256KB write 414MB/s, read 1103MB/s
512KB write 492MB/s, read 1136MB/s
1024KB write 390MB/s, read 1125MB/s
2048KB write 452MB/s, read 1096MB/s
4096KB write 456MB/s, read 1084MB/s
8192KB write 444MB/s, read 1079MB/s

Added comment: Mellanox network cards were direct connected without switch.
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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ATTO benchmark does not test or show IOPS.
I could run some IOMETER tests, Hdtune does not test map network drive, I had to use ISCSI disk, then it is not the same for comparison.

I don't pay too much attention to benchmark, or tweaking. The builds are so cheap, I just use more servers. I have a bunch Mellanox 40gb card that is sitting on the shelf because I am happy with the low end Xpenology server performance. The key for me is SSD raid and 10gb network link.

In my lab, I could run 6 to 25 linux or Windows vm on Xpenology only with 4gb memory without issue.
I typical run the Xpenology server that hosting working vm with raid zero ( 240gb SSD x 2 ) or raid 10 with x4 SSD , "master VM template" resides on raid 5 hard disks for backup. I backup / replicate the vm that I care about to hard disk raid. Most of the time, the vms are deploy using automate deployment method, rebuilding is fast.

I stop buying or using raid cards nowadays, I use the sata ports on the motherboard, most consumer motherboard gives me 6 ports ( 6x3tb or 6x4tb). If I want more, I'll use Supermicro or Intel enterprise version of motherboard that will give me 12 to 20 sata ports.

I do have 2 HP X1600 (P212 controller with 6x3tb and 2 SSD) running Windows 2012r2 storage space with tiering in case I need more IOPS.

I'll post some IOMeter test later, let me know what you like to see.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
2,644
1,496
113
Server side
Xpenology DSM 5.0-4458 Update 2 with Gnoboot, ( newer Nanoboot doe not support Mellanox card )
AMD A4-3200 , MSI A75 motherboard, 4gb mem, 6x3 tb seagate 7200rpm raid5, 1 Mellanox ConnectX ( not ConnectX-2) 10gb card

Testing client side
Fresh Windows 2012R2 bare metal install , no tweaks ( only tweaks from Mellanox driver default install )
I5-2500k, with MSI Z68A motherboard, 8gb mem, 1 local 2.5" 5200rpm OS boot disk, 1 Mellanox ConnectX-2 10gb card
Mellanox driver version MLNX_VPI_WinOF-4_60_All_win2012R2_x64
Mellanox network cards were direct connected without switch.

iometer-1.1.0-rc1-win64.x86_64 with OpenPerformanceTest.icf

|*TEST NAME*| *Avg Resp. Time ms*|*Avg IOs/sec*|*Avg MB/sec*|*% cpu load*|
|*Max Throughput-100%Read*|1.96 |29882 |933 |0%|
|*RealLife-60%Rand-65%Read*|177.01 |335 |2 |0%|
|*Max Throughput-50%Read* |3.68 |15739 |491 |0%|
|*Random-8k-70%Read* |217.06 |275 |2 |0%|

Next, I'll post result with 2 x old 128gb sata2 SSD as raid zero
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
2,644
1,496
113
Looking for ideas and ways to benchmark virtual Xpenology with hyper-v as well as vSphere.

I have many servers in my lab, 3 Dell C6100 , 2 HP, a dozen Intel servers range from dual x5650 to E5-2650 to E5-2430 .
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
2,644
1,496
113
Hey everyone.

I am starting a thread on making Xpenology work on Hyper-V. Why? You can run Windows 8.1 Pro as a host, or even Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. One machine. Awesome NAS. Flexibility of a VM host or a Windows RDP machine, especially when aggregating networking.

The guide I used was posted in another thread but based on the ESXi version here.

Going to keep a little log of the steps:
1. Download the nanoboot.img file
2. Convert nanoboot.img to hyper-v vhd
3. Make a VM and attach nanoboot.vhd to the VM IDE O - This will not work on the SCSI controller.
4. Take drives and attach to the SCSI controller. You can use hyper-v disk pass-through guide or test with dynamically expanding virtual disks. I would recommend testing with the vhdx files for now.
5. Boot the VM
6. Select upgrade DSM
8. Select a version. I am working with DSM 5.0-4482

That worked and let everything install. When it game time to reboot, I've now got a black screen and blinking cursor.

Anyone get further than this?
Please see https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...l-xpenology-dsm5-0-4493-updat-3-testing.3711/
 
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