Xpenology 7.0.1 on ESXi 7.x
Synology
Frank -
3:51 PM

 I have been a huge fan of Synology for years!

Back in the day, XPenology was a great way to have a virtualized instance of a Synology NAS that you could run as a virtual machine. Because of its extensive set of capabilities and ease of use, it was a no-brainer.

Needless to say, I was super excited to learn that a new loader had been developed allowing for a DSM 7.x version of XPenology to be created.

My journey started with a number of Korean sites and a few videos that were old, using VMware Workstation, or hard to follow since I don’t understand Korean.

I am pleased to say that I can now share this build recipe with you, and show you a simple, repeatable way to build a virtual machine and install DSM 7.x. There are a few versions available using the redpill method, and I am using the latest platform release which is the DS3622xs+.

  • Create virtual machine- Guest OS Family: Linux| Guest OS Version: Other 5.x or later Linux (64-bit).
  • Virtual Hardware
    • 4 CPU Cores, 4 GB Memory. (Your mileage will vary here depending on your use case.)
      • Be sure to check the box  “Expose Hardware Virtualization to the Guest OS”
    • Add at least 2 SATA Controllers.
    • Remove SCSI Controller and default hard drive.
    • Remove CD-ROM Device.
  • VM Options
    • Boot Options (Change Firmware to BIOS.)
  • Upload tinycore-redpill vmdk to datastore. Get VMDK here.
  • Add Existing Hard Disk, tinycore-redpill.v0.4.5.vmdk . Be sure to modify the setting and pick SATA 0:0. It will try to add a new SCSI Controller and make it SCSI 0:0 by default.) After you have set the existing disk to use SATA 0:0, delete the SCSI Controller.
  • Add New Hard Drive(s). These will be your data drives. Again, be sure to select each drive and set it to use the SATA Controller and remove the SCSI Controller that gets automatically added. Add all data drives to SATA 1:x

 Boot VM. Once TinyCore Desktop comes up, go to terminal and type “ifconfig” to get the ip address. (right-click on the desktop, select applications, terminal). In some cases, you may need to use the down arrow on the keyboard to highlight “applications, then use the right arrow key to highlight “terminal”, then press “Enter”.

Once you get the IP Address, open your local SSH client and establish an SSH connection so that you can use copy/paste with the commands listed below.

SSH user: tc

SSH password: P@ssw0rd

Once you have successfully established an SSH connection, run the following commands:

sudo su
./rploader.sh update now
./rploader.sh serialgen DS3622xs+

./rploader.sh satamap broadwellnk-7.0.1-42218
./rploader.sh backup now

./rploader.sh build broadwellnk-7.0.1-42218 auto

poweroff
Once the virtual machine has powered off, edit the virtual machine settings and set the custom MAC address on the VMXNET 3 adapter.

Power the VM back on. 

Open a console, and select the 2nd option in the boot menu (SATA). 
If you miss it, reset the VM, and try again. You will only need to do this the first time, after that subsuquent reboots will remember your choice.

Wait about 1-2 minutes, and you should be able to find the Synology using find.synology.com or download the Synology Assistant.

Download the PAT file from here:

Once you have installed DSM, and gone through initial setup, you will want to install VMware Tools. We enable this through the use of a Docker container.
Go to package manager, and install Docker.

Enable SSH in DSM, and connect via SSH.

Once you have established a successful SSH connection, type the 2 commands below. (Or copy and paste..)

sudo mkdir /root/.ssh

sudo docker run -d --restart=always --net=host -v /root/.ssh/:/root/.ssh/ --name open-vm-tools yalewp/xpenology-open-vm-tools
Reference links:

https://xpenology.club/install-dsm-7-on-baremetal-or-vm/
https://www.2cpu.co.kr/lec/4208

https://github.com/pocopico/tinycore-redpill

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