Introduction
In the realm of IT and tech enthusiasts, homelabs play an integral role in learning, testing, and experimenting with new technologies. Whether you’re a system administrator, developer, or a hobbyist, setting up a virtualized environment in your homelab allows you to replicate production-like setups, test software, or simply learn how virtualization works.
One tool that has grown in popularity for homelab virtualization is Synology Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). Synology VMM is a robust, user-friendly solution that lets you run virtual machines (VMs) on Synology NAS devices. With it, you can host multiple operating systems, test server configurations, and much more—all while leveraging the powerful storage and backup features of Synology NAS.
In this guide, we’ll dive deep into how to use Synology Virtual Machine Manager in a homelab. We’ll cover everything from setting up your Synology NAS to creating virtual machines and leveraging advanced features. By the end of this post, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to maximize the potential of Synology VMM for your homelab.
What is Synology Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)?
Synology Virtual Machine Manager is a hypervisor platform that runs on Synology NAS devices. It allows users to create, manage, and run virtual machines, offering flexibility to host different operating systems and applications. With its seamless integration into Synology’s ecosystem, VMM provides a centralized platform for storage, networking, and compute resources.
Features of Synology VMM
- Multiple VM Hosting: Run multiple operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and even Synology’s own Virtual DSM.Snapshots and Backups: Safeguard your VMs with point-in-time recovery options.High Availability: Set up clusters to ensure uptime for critical applications.Network Management: Configure virtual switches for isolated or bridged networks.Seamless Integration: Easily connect VMM with Synology NAS storage for efficient data management.
Why Choose Synology Virtual Machine Manager for Your Homelab?
If you’re considering tools for virtualization in your homelab, Synology VMM offers several advantages that make it a compelling choice:
- Cost-Effective: Unlike traditional hypervisors that may require expensive licenses, Synology VMM is included with your NAS device. You only need to ensure your NAS meets the hardware requirements.Ease of Use: The intuitive DSM interface simplifies VM creation and management, making it ideal for users who are new to virtualization.Resource Efficiency: Synology VMM optimizes the use of available NAS resources, balancing performance and storage for small-scale setups.Flexibility: Whether you’re testing software, running a lab environment, or hosting a small server, VMM caters to various use cases.
System Requirements for Synology VMM
Not all Synology NAS models are equipped to handle virtualization. Synology VMM requires a NAS with sufficient processing power, RAM, and storage to host virtual machines efficiently. Here are the key requirements:
Supported Synology NAS Models
- Plus and higher series models (e.g., DS920+, DS1522+)Rack-mounted models for enterprise-grade setups (e.g., RS1221+)
A full list of supported models can be found here.
Install Synology Virtual Machine Manager
Installing Synology VMM is as easy as all other Synology packages. Open the Package Center, type “Virtual Machine Manager” in the search bar and install it.
Configure Synology Virtual Machine Manager
When you start Synology VMM for the first time there are few things you need to configure.
Click on Start, to start the configuration.
You will receive a message stating that Open vSwitch cannot be enabled automatically if you have configured a network bond, and you need to enable it manually.
Go to Control Panel – Network – Manage – Open vSwitch settings
Check “Enable Open vSwitch” and click OK.
You need to change your bond configuration if it was set to “Adaptive Load Balancing”, as this option is not available with Open vSwitch. You can find information about the available bond modes here. In my case I selected Balance-SLB.
After that go back to Synology VMM and start the Wizard again. You can now see that every required setting is enabled. Click Next.
Select a volume that will store your virtual machine data as well as the ISO images to install them. I would recommend that you go with an SSD or NVMe pool, because installing on an HDD pool takes forever.
After everything was selected and you clicked next the setup wizard is completed successfully.
Under Synology VMM – Overview you can now see you new VMM node. In my case it is a DS723+ with 10GB of memory.
Synology Virtual Machine Manager licensing
Although Synology VMM is free of charge you could by a Synology VMM Pro license to get more feature and get the ability to build a Synology VMM cluster.
Here is a comparison of VMM and VMM Pro.
You will also get a free Virtual DSM license with your Synology NAS. Virtual DSM is really cool because you can deploy a virtual instance of DSM to play around with. You can test there e.g. no settings you want to implement in your production DSM but you’re not sure what happens if you enable it. You can also have more than one Virtual DSM instance deployed, but you can have only one running at a time with the free license.
Upload ISO image to Synology Virtual Machine Manager
To install our first VM we need some installation medium first. To upload e.g. a Windows 11 24H2 ISO image we are doing the following.
Go to Synology VMM – Image and click Add.
In the Add ISO File dialog, select From computer and choose the required ISO file.
You can give the ISO file a name that will show up under images. In my case I choose “Windows 11 24H2“.
Select the Storage where you would like to upload the image to.
After clicking DONE, the ISO fill get’s uploaded to the datastore. Depending on the size of the ISO this can take some minutes.
After the upload is finished you should see the ISO image showing up as “Healthy“.
For Windows systems only, we also need the Synology Guest Tool, while Linux tools can be downloaded through Linux package managers. For this click on Download Synology Guest Tool.
You can see that version 1.5.3 is available. Click on download to get them.
They are small in size so it shouldn’t take that long. After the download and the preparation they should show up under images.
Limitation of Synology Virtual Machine Manager
At the time of writing this post the current version of DSM running on my DS723+ was 7.2.2-72806 Update 1. This DSM version is based on a Linux Kernel 4.4.302+ which is an LTS release and will be End of Life (EOL) in January 2027 (Source). In comparison to that QNAP QTS and QuTS hero system is based on the much newer 5.10 LTS Linux kernel.
Compared to the old 4.4 LTS kernel the 5.10 kernel brings performance improvements, security enhancements and improved virtualization features and support.
Synology Virtual Machine Manager is based on the following software packages:
| Software package | Version | Released | Current version | Released |
| libvirt | 6.8.0 | 2020-10-01 | 10.9.0 | 2024-11-01 |
| QEMU | 6.0.1 | 2021-04-30 | 9.1.2 | 2024-11-20 |
Current version is the most recent version that is available of this software package. As you can see, even with the newest Synology VMM version , the underlying software packages are already 4 years old. I think this is always a trade-off between stability and innovation and maybe compatibility between the packages and the Linux Kernel.
One of my main use cases I wanted to use Synology VMM for, was to run a vSAN Witness host, which is a nested ESXi hosts. It should have been possible but unfortunately the E1000 implementation in QEMU is not recognized by the ESXi host. When running the following command you also see all the supported network devices QEMU should support:
qemu-system-x86_64 --device help 
As you can see vmxnet3 would have been possible to configure with QEMU but Synology VMM haven’t implemented this possibility. I assume the reason for this was that Synology wanted to make the VMM as user-friendly as possible. Unfortunately also using virsh is not 100% possible with Synology VMM as I assume there is some proprietary management layer in between all the KVM components.
Personally I have the next iteration of DSM and VMM will come with newer kernel and updates packages so we can get the full potential out of Synology VMM.
Conclusion
Synology Virtual Machine Manager is a powerful tool for homelab enthusiasts looking to explore virtualization, test new technologies, or learn IT concepts. Its user-friendly interface, integration with Synology NAS, and robust features like snapshots and high availability make it an excellent choice for small-scale virtualization. If the limitations of VMM get’s addressed by Synology in the near future this could be an even better homelab virtualization solution.
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