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In this video I will show you how to turn a VMWare virtual machine into a Synology NAS server with physical hard disks
Here I prepare two traditional hard drives, each with a capacity of 500GB
Of course you can install larger capacity hard drives like 2TB, 4TB or more
First, on the Windows operating system, check if the computer has detected two additional hard drives
You open Disk Management and see the list of detected hard disks
As you can see there are 3 hard drives, the first disk installs the Windows operating system
and the other two disks are Disk 1 and Disk 2
To add physical disks to the VMWare virtual machine you must remove the existing partitions and return them to the Unallocated state
To install Synology on VMWare hypervisor you download tinycore redpill
I will put the download link in the description
You scroll down and you will find the file for the VMWare hypervisor
A small file of size 62MB
After extracting you will get a file with extension vmdk
This is a file specific to the VMWare hypervisor
We will add it to the VMware hypervisor in the next steps
Next, you create a new virtual machine with the VMWare Workstation hypervisor
Run as administrator
But to be able to add physical hard disks to the virtual machine you must open VMWare Workstation with administrative rights
You can use the Pro version or the Player version depending on the version you are using
You create a new Linux virtual machine and name it accordingly
To get a Synology NAS server you need to modify the virtual machine
You increase the RAM memory to 4GB or 6GB depending on your computer
I tried it with a virtual machine with 2GB of RAM and it works fine
You remove the default hard drive
You remove the CD DVD drive because it is not needed
You configure the network in bridged mode so that other computers can access the Synology NAS server
Next is to add the hard disks for the Synology NAS server
Add Hard Disk SATA
Use an existing virtual disk
The first hard disk to add is the bootloader downloaded in the previous step
You browse to the file with the extension vmdk downloaded in the previous step
tinycore-redpill.vmdk
Having added the boot hard disk, now you add the two physical hard disks we mentioned at the beginning of the video
Add Hard Disk SATA
Use a physical disc
A list of 3 hard disks, the physical hard disks that will be added to the virtual machine are Physical Disk 1 and Physical Disk 2
I will add Physical Disk 1 first
Finished adding the first physical hard disk
You do the same with the remaining physical hard disk
Note that you can only add physical hard disks to the virtual machine when you open VMWare with administrative rights
Physical Disk 1 has been added to the virtual machine, so I will choose Physical Disk 2
Physical Disk 0 is the hard drive where the Windows operating system is installed, so I did not choose it
Let's start the virtual machine and start building the Synology NAS loader
Tiny core image build
You can build loaders for various models of Synology NAS with Tiny Core Redpill
To build the loader open a command prompt and check if the virtual machine has an internet connection
To test that I use the command ping 8.8.8.8
So the virtual machine has an internet connection
Notice the file rploader.sh, we only use the commands around this file
First you update with the command sudo ./rploader.sh update now
Next you create the serial and mac address for the Synology NAS server
you use the command sudo ./rploader.sh serialgen
Here you can create 10 different models of Synology nas
But in my opinion the most commonly used model is DS3615xs
sudo ./rploader.sh serialgen DS3615xs now
This is the serial of the Synology Nas server
Here is the MAC address of the Synology Nas server
And here are the operating systems you can use
To build the loader for the DS3615xs you must use the bromolow operating system
The command used here is sudo ./rploader.sh build bromolow-7.1.0-42661
This is the latest operating system at the time of making this video
Please wait patiently for a few minutes to complete the loader for the Synology NAS server
When you receive such message is successful
Next, turn off the virtual machine and edit its network configuration
You browse to your virtual machine's storage directory
Here you will find a file with the extension vmx
This file stores your virtual machine configuration
You scroll down and find the network configuration line containing e1000
You edit from e1000 to e1000e
Don't forget to save your changes before closing the file
The virtual machine preparation is done, the next steps are to configure the Synology NAS server
Other than the previous boot your VM has 3 options
You choose to boot from SATA
When a screen like this appears, it's done
To discover the Synology NAS server you use the Synology Assistant software
It will take a few scans to find the Synology NAS server, so please be patient
It took me about 3 minutes to find my Synology NAS server
After the 3rd scan I found my Synology NAS server
You connect to it to configure
Next you install the operating system for Synology NAS
You go to the Synology NAS download center and download the operating system version that matches the model you are using
As in this video I use model DS3615xs
Operating system is 7.1.0 42661
You need to download the correct operating system that matches the loader we created in the previous step
Otherwise the installation will fail
You see the downloaded file name contains the model name and operating system version name
That's it, I got the file I wanted
Next I uploaded and started installing the Synology NAS server
It will take about 5 to 10 minutes to complete the installation
You will be asked for a name, then create an admin account for the Synology NAS server
With this Synology NAS virtual machine you cannot update the operating system, so in the 3 options,
You choose the bottom option and then click next
A Synology NAS server management page has appeared, so we do most of the work
Next we check if the Synology NAS server detects the physical hard disks
As you can see the Synology NAS server detected two physical hard disks as we added in the previous step
So we have successfully built a Synology NAS server with VMWare hypervisor with physical hard disks
This way you can increase your Synology NAS server storage if you want
Plus you can take advantage of your computers to turn them into a NAS server, two in one
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