Virtual Machine
At Virtual Machine Manager > Virtual Machine, you can do the following:
- Create virtual machines on the hosts to run virtual machines and other OS
- Power on, shut down, move, or clone your virtual machines
- Monitor CPU usage, memory usage, as well as storage and networking resources of each virtual machine
- Enable High Availability for your virtual machines
Please note that the following features are not supported on Virtual DSM:
- RAID
- Hardware related settings, such as Wi-Fi, fan, and power
- Link Aggregation of virtual network adapters
To create a virtual machine:
- Click Create to open the wizard.
- Choose the operating system for the virtual machine to be created.
- Choose the storage on which your virtual machine will be stored.
Note: The virtual machine will shut down when the storage runs out of space. - In basic specifications panel, enter the following information:
- Name: Specify a name for the virtual machine.
- CPU(s): Define the number of CPU cores.
CPU Advanced Options
- Enable CPU compatibility mode: You can also enable CPU compatibility mode to allow live migration between two hosts with different CPU models.
- Enable Hyper-V Enlightenments: This can improve the performance of Windows series virtual machines.
QoS Settings
- Reserved CPU threads: You can reserve CPU threads for virtual machine that require better performance; these reserved CPU threads cannot be used for other services or virtual machines.
- Virtual machine priority: You can customize the relative weight of virtual machines that share physical CPU threads to determine which virtual machines will get more resources in the event of a CPU or I/O contention.
- Memory: Define the memory size. The memory size you specified here will be reserved when you power on the virtual machine.
-
Video card:
- cirrus: Cirrus Logic GD5446 Video card. All Windows versions starting from Windows 95 should recognize and use this graphic card.
- vga: Standard VGA card with Bochs VBE extensions. All Windows versions starting from Windows XP should recognize this graphic card. It supports higher resolution.
- vmvga: Compared to vga, vmvga is a more advanced virtual display card.
- Description: The simple description of this virtual machine to easily recognize virtual machine. Description can only contain at most 64 characters.
- To configure storage, enter the following information:
- DSM image: Choose the version of Virtual DSM image. (The option is available on Virtual DSM only.)
- Virtual Disk: Define the size and interface of the virtual disks. You can add up to eight virtual disks.
Note:
- The virtual disk interface supports VirtIO, SATA and IDE. VirtIO interface can deliver a better performance; SATA and IDE interface have a better compatibility with most operating systems.
- When enabling the space reclamation function, the system will also enable the disk command of space reclamation. If the operating system of your virtual machine does not support this command, the space reclamation function will not work.
- To configure the network card settings:
- Network: You can configure up to eight network interfaces for each virtual machine. Select the model of the network card and the virtual switches these network interfaces connect to.
Note:
- Support VirtIO, e1000, and rtl8139 network card models.
- You can initialize the network settings (IPv4 or IPv6) of the Virtual DSM when you are creating it.
- You cannot choose among IPv6 transition mechanisms (6in4, 6to4 or DHCPv6-PD) when initializing the network settings of the Virtual DSM
- You can also choose to enable SR-IOV, which allows supported network adapters to accelerate the network performance while consuming fewer CPU resources. To enable SR-IOV, both your host and physical network adapter must support SR-IOV.
- When SR-IOV is enabled, you cannot choose network card model.
- When SR-IOV is enabled, Live Migration of virtual machines among hosts will not be supported.
- When SR-IOV is enabled, virtual machines cannot be suspended.
- Network: You can configure up to eight network interfaces for each virtual machine. Select the model of the network card and the virtual switches these network interfaces connect to.
- To configure other settings:
- ISO file for boot up: Choose an ISO file in the image as your boot up file.
- Additional ISO files: Select ISO files you want to attach to the virtual machine.
Note:
- While creating a Windows virtual machine, the Guest Tool for Virtual Machine Manager will be automatically downloaded.
- Virtual DSM does not support ISO files.
- VMM supports up to four IDE devices, and running ISO files requires an IDE controller. If there are already more than two IDE disks on the virtual machine, it's possible that the ISO files cannot be added.
- Autostart: Choose whether to autostart the virtual machine when your Synology NAS is powered on.
Note:
- If HA is enabled, the settings will be invalid.
- Firmware: Select the firmware type to be assigned to the virtual machine.
- Keyboard Layout: Select the keyboard layout to be assigned to the virtual machine.
- Virtual USB Controller: Select the USB controller to be assigned to the virtual machine.
- USB device: Choose USB devices in the host for the virtual machine.
Note:
- You cannot assign a USB device to multiple virtual machines.
- A virtual machine can only use the USB device which belongs to the running host of the virtual machine.
- In some older operating systems, (Windows 7, for instance) virtual USB 3.0 controller might require a nec-xhci driver to be installed, and there might be some compatibility issues.
- When using virtual USB 2.0 controller, please plug USB 3.0 device in the USB 2.0 port of Synology NAS.
- When a virtual machine is under live migration, USB devices will be unmounted.
- A USB device will be unmounted if it does not exist in the host which a virtual machine is running on.
- To assign permissions for users or groups: selected users or groups are allowed to power on, shut down, force shut down, restart, suspend, resume, and discard the virtual machine via Virtual Machine Manager.
Note:
- Local accounts need to log into the host to manage the virtual machine. While domain users can manage the virtual machine by logging in any host.
- Summary: Confirm the settings, and tick Power on the virtual machine after creation if necessary. Click Apply to finish.
Note:
- When creating a Virtual DSM, if the image is not in the specified storage location, the image will be downloaded from another location and saved at the current location.
To import a virtual machine:
- Click Import in the drop-down menu of Create.
- Choose an import method and a source of virtual machine to be imported:
- Import from OVA files:
- Upload a file from PC: Select an OVA file from your computer.
- Select a file from Synology NAS: Select an OVA file from a shared folder on your Synology NAS.
- Import from disk image: Select a disk image previously uploaded.
- Import from OVA files:
- Follow the steps in "To create a virtual machine" to finish.
Note:
- You cannot modify the size and order of disks in ova or disk image during importing.
- If an OVA file is imported, the settings will be automatically applied according to the file.
- When importing a virtual disk image to a virtual machine, if the image is not in the specified storage location, the image will be downloaded from another location and saved at the current location.
To edit a virtual machine:
- Select the desired virtual machine.
- Click Edit to modify its hardware specifications and permissions.
Note:
- When a virtual machine is running, you cannot perform the following tasks:
- Change the CPU, memory and video card settings.
- Add or delete network adapters and modify the model for the virtual machine.
- Modify the order or the interface of virtual disks.
- Change the virtual USB controller.
- When a virtual machine is running, you can only hot-add a VirtIO virtual disk to it.
- You can click Edit and choose where to boot from for a virtual machine, excluding Virtual DSM. It is recommended that you select booting from Disk in case a virtual machine repeatedly boots from a CD-ROM right after it is created. If a virtual machine fails to boot from the selected option, it will automatically boot from the other option.
- Changing the storage location of a virtual machine requires an enormous amount of time to move virtual disks. During the process, you cannot power on or perform any operations on the virtual machine.
To connect to a virtual machine:
- Select the desired virtual machine.
- Click Connect.
- Virtual DSM: You will be directed to the login page of the selected Virtual DSM.
- Others: You will be directed to the web VNC console of the selected virtual machine.
To control the power of virtual machines:
- Select a virtual machine.
- Click Power:
- Power on: Power on the virtual machine. When you power on a virtual machine, you will be prompted to select a host on which the virtual machine will run. Each host will reserve 1.5 GB memory or 10% of the system memory, depending which value is larger, and the rest of the memory will be used for the virtual machines in use. If the memory of the host runs short, you will not be able to run virtual machines on it
- Shutdown: Shut down the virtual machine.
- Force shutdown: Force shut down the virtual machine. The power of the virtual machine will be off directly, and data loss might occur.
- Restart: Reboot the virtual machine.
- Suspend: Suspend the virtual machine, and store it onto the volume of its host. Please refer to Cluster for setting storage for suspended virtual machines.
- Resume: Resume the virtual machine to its previous state before suspension.
- Discard: Discard the suspended state of the virtual machine. The virtual machine will become powered-off state, and data loss might occur.
Note:
- You are recommended to install the QEMU Guest Agent. After installation, Shutdown and Restart commands will be delivered to the operating system to make sure that the commands can be executed successfully.
- Installing Synology Guest Tool on Windows will also install QEMU Guest Agent and VirtIO drivers.
- For different distributions of Linux, the ways of installing QEMU Guest Agent differ due to different package managements. For instance, apt-get can be used for Ubuntu while yum can be used for Fedora.
To perform other actions on a virtual machine:
- Select a virtual machine.
- Click Action:
- Clone: Clone the virtual machine.
- Export: Export the virtual machine and save to a shared folder. You can click Mode to select the export mode which allows you to export the virtual machine compatible with VMware. During exporting, you can click Cancel to stop the operation.
- Migrate: Move the virtual machine to another host or change the storage location of the virtual machine. You can perform live migration if the virtual machine is currently running. During migrating, you can click Cancel to stop the operation.
- Reset: Reset the administrator password and network configurations of Virtual DSM.
- Delete: All of its virtual disks will be deleted as well.
- Take a snapshot: Create a recovery point (including the virtual machine settings and all virtual disks) of the virtual machine and it will exist in the snapshot list after the creation.
- Snapshot list: Open the snapshot list of a virtual machine. You can recover a virtual machine with a snapshot or clone a new virtual machine with a snapshot. Please refer to Protection for more information.
- Create share link: Create a share link of the virtual machine. You can set the validity period and a password, as well as send the link to an assigned email address. (Not supported on Virtual DSM.)
- Share Link Manager: You can view all share links in this tab and edit or delete the share links. (Not supported on Virtual DSM.)
Note:
- You can set MAC address manually for a virtual machine other than Virtual DSM.
- MAC address for the virtual NIC is automatically generated and will not duplicate in the same cluster. However, if there are multiple clusters in the same local network, you may get duplicate MAC addresses for your virtual machines. To resolve the conflict, you can re-generate a different one.
- If a host contains bonding network in balance-slb mode, please do not connect its network directly to other hosts in the cluster; otherwise, network connection errors may occur on the virtual machines running on the connected hosts.
- If you find that released space is less than expected when you delete snapshots, it might be because space reclamation is processing or because the space is still occupied by other snapshots, recycle bins, or file clones.