How to Create a VM Using QNAP Virtualization Station (Windows Server 2016)

In this video, I show you how create a new virtual machine in QNAP's Virtualization Station. The intent is to have a server running 24/7, be able to remote desktop into it from any machine on the network, and be able to transfer files from the VM to the host QNAP drive (or vice versa). I will be installing Windows Server 2016.
Items in this video:
QNAP TS-451 ► amzn.to/2MOjl7H
My Gear:
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Thank you to all my subscribers and viewers!
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[@accessrandom]

Much obliged 🎩 to all my viewers. Like. Share. Subscribe. Enjoy. Support links ☕ BuyMeACoffee: buymeacoff.ee/accessrandom 🐦 Twitter: twitter.com/accessrand0m ► Subscribe: kzbin.info

[@SiegfriedFarnonMRCVS]

don't usually comment but that is one of the most professional instructional videos I have ever seen on youtube...

[@accessrandom]

I'm honored to receive your comment - thank you! I plan to make about two tutorial videos a month.

[@MrUpgrayddd]

totally agree!

[@3hlav]

After first 3 minutes of video I click like and subscribe. I never did this two things so quickly in a past in my life. So much impression did this tutorial video on me. Sorry for my english.

[@accessrandom]

Thank you so much 🙏. Very happy to have you here.

[@douglasarmstrong1211]

Awesome.... thank you, one of the best demonstrations of any kind I have viewed. Congratulations

[@accessrandom]

Thanks!

[@ipe67]

Best tutorial in this area! Still working in 2020, I used it for my TVS-872XT and it works perfect!

[@accessrandom]

Much obliged 🎩 Happy to hear that the video is still useful. I'll need to update it whenever I can get a new, more recent QNAP model...

[@calebrasak6941]

Totally worked for me but Im curious how I get audio set up so it plays inside the controller system. Any help would be appreciated!

[@armandobeirao]

Amazing, a simple and incredibly well explained tutorial. Congratulations.

[@accessrandom]

Thank you my friend

[@bigbertho]

It's soo cool to find out that there's at least one person other than me that has a QNAP, has added more than 8 GB of Ram an has installed a windows server OS on a virtual machine. I mean, I know there are many many ones who have done this, but it's just funny to watch all I've done, step by step, on a video posted by a professional. Nice! (and thank you!)

[@accessrandom]

You're welcome, and thank you 👍 I honestly didn't think there would be too much of an audience for this.

[@bigbertho]

You‘ll never know how many could need help with this. A part from this, the videos are clear, direct a very well cut, to focus on the important things. The only think I new about windows server two days ago was that it was from Microsoft :) If I could, I would suggest a short integration. After installing windows server 2019 I wasn’t able to access shared folders on my network and was kind of frustrated. after a while I found out that Microsoft has changed a default setting and now you have to enable insecure guest logons in order to allow acces to shared folders in a simple home network. I found this on some website: Error 0x80004005 when trying to access a share: Hit {Windows Key} and type in “Edit group policy” and open it. Goto: Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\Lanman Workstation “Enable insecure guest logons” - Enable

[@accessrandom]

I'll make sure to incorporate that into my next video about VMs (I'll be making one about VirtualBox). This might also be a good addition to part 2 of my most recent video. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@billynhk]

whoops ! this is a professional sharing that helps setup win server under VMware within Qnap which does saving a lot time, great job ! Quick , straight forward, no clumsy boring dialogs over lengthy time, Thx

[@accessrandom]

You're welcome, and thank you 🙏

[@Jeff-wz3xo]

Great video. short to the point no filler. Great voice by the way

[@accessrandom]

Much obliged. 🎩 I appreciate it.

[@hagatronic]

Great video. I followed it and got up and running without problems. Thanks!

[@accessrandom]

You're welcome, and thank you for sharing the success story 👍

[@MrElromy]

Well done mate, nice and straight to the point. keep it up

[@accessrandom]

Many thanks 🙏

[@yinyang69]

Solid instructions! Thank you.

[@accessrandom]

You're welcome, and thank you 👍🙏

[@mesteme]

It was a pleasure to watch and listen - superb enunciation. New sub.

[@accessrandom]

Much obliged 🎩 - glad to have you here. Thank you.

[@kanawati]

Great video. My first on this channel. Subscribed!

[@accessrandom]

Thank you! 😃

[@virayudh]

Outstanding tutorial, very easy to follow and understand.

[@accessrandom]

Thank you - I appreciate it very much.

[@solaris051]

Thank you SOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!! I've been trying to set up the rdp access for 4 hours on my QNAP, but all in vain. with our vid got it right in a moment.

[@accessrandom]

You're welcome, and thank you! Glad you found the video useful.

[@KnibbsInc]

Your voice is so smooth. Great video. I would suggest taking a look through server manager as most of the actions you performed can be done through that centralized application on WS2016, it will save you time :)

[@accessrandom]

Thanks for the kind words and the tip. The force of habit is so strong I'd forgotten about using the server manager (drat, I just finished a voiceover for Win Server 2016 hyper-v)...

[@accessrandom]

I've posted the video for installing Virtio drivers here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i3_ZdpR4fMhqacU If you find it helpful, please like and share!

[@thabangmashego4170]

Thank you so much...Awesome! this is likeable to be professional. thanks again!

[@accessrandom]

You're welcome, and thank you 🙏👍

[@johanljungman131]

Awesome video!!

[@metoo7587]

This video is not something one just sits and record a Saturday evening over a beer! It takes a lot of planning and preparation - plus a huge amount of editing before it can be published. It's amazing that you actually decided to do this - and publish it for free. The world becomes a better place thanks to folks like you :-) I have one question though ; In terms of protection against worms, malware and viruses crawling both ways between your client PC and the QNAP, which do you think is better, and why - accessing the Windows WM in a browser, or using RDP ?

[@accessrandom]

The beer does help though 😀. Many thanks for the acknowledgement and vote of confidence. In my case, I always access the VM on the local network (i.e., I never log in from the outside onto the VM), so I am always behind a firewall. With Window Server on the VM, I do have a bit more control over the users who can access the VM through RDP but in terms of viruses, I'd say both methods are roughly the same security-wise. I find RDP to be much faster though, as the browser has mouse lag.

[@Germaingazm]

Great thanks

[@justethom]

0 dislike and I'm your 50th like :) Great video !

[@accessrandom]

Thank you! I greatly appreciate your (and everyone else's) support.

[@BoWaLiED]

Awesome video great narration

[@accessrandom]

Thanks - I appreciate it.

[@chrismoore9997]

Great video. Thanks

[@accessrandom]

Thanks much.

[@letheisle1348]

great video, thank you...before i give this a try, i see in your description it says to be able to remote desktop from any machine on the network...is there a way to remote desktop in from a machine outside the local network if i want to get in while away from home?

[@pinankshahlovinghuman]

Excellent video

[@accessrandom]

Thank you very much

[@vampiremaffia]

Exemplary tutorial & thanks for sharing! My Qnap NAS (TS-351) is probably not as powerful as yours but it also allows RAM upgrades and SSD cache acceleration. Can't wait to build a virtual machine to facilitate my renewed interest in web programming. I must admit that having discovered the delightful HPE ProLiant MicroServer family only a few days ago I almost regret buying the Qnap NAS but now I have to make do with what I got and will try to use the Qnap to its full potential.

[@accessrandom]

Thank you! I'm afraid I didn't see the TS-351 in the supported hardware on QNAP's Virtualization Station page. Were you able to find the app in their app center? I am hoping it is just a case of updating their documentation.

[@vampiremaffia]

@@accessrandom Yes, VirtualizationStation 3 app is available and upon initialization it shows that 'System Minimum Requirements' are met (I did configure a virtual switch beforehand). Now I have to buy 1 or 2 M.2 SSDs and find that ##@! box that I keep with all the memory modules in it with at least a decent pair of DDR3L SODIMMs. Can't tell you how excited I am about the prospect to actually have a useful vs on my NAS(!) of all things, I remember I once was in demi-nerd paradise when I first discovered Oracle VM Virtualbox, finally got rid of all my bulky test servers etc. To improve on that and have a vm 24/7 on a NAS is just a wonderful thing assuming the end result is not too slow. Even when speed is an issue I would still explore a Linux vm just to have a nice all round coding machine. Good stuff!

[@accessrandom]

Good, that's a good sign (about it working on the TS-351). Yeah, I have a couple QNAP VMs running doing 24/7 stuff. For local VMs I use VirtualBox. which seems rock solid after having tried VMWare and Hyper-V.

[@prasanthpro10]

Good Video!!

[@accessrandom]

Thank you!

[@laromai2245]

Similar voice as Jim Browning :)

[@accessrandom]

Thank you - I just need to work on my Irish accent 😀

[@samsurrahman2771]

Thank you for creating this video which is very informative. Is it a good idea to make the QNAP VM as Domain controller instead of purchasing dedicated server hardware?

[@accessrandom]

Thank you. Since QNAP's virtualization station itself could be a point of failure, you may want to consider a standalone server (or at least use a virtual domain controller in conjunction with a standalone server controller).

[@laromai2245]

Works on TS-473 as well.

[@accessrandom]

Awesome - thank you for the additional data point. 🙏

[@fUjiMaNia]

great video. I have a 32 GB on my QNAP but Virtual station isn't allowing me to go over 4GB RAM for the VM. What would be causing that?

[@punitmenda4399]

Your videos for Qnap are great, I used to to create a win 7 VM to run some old software. It's impossible to understand anything Qnap puts out. Would you happen to have a video explaining how to backup and restore the VMs? I see the options available, but not sure how to handle the restore process to ensure the backup copy restores exactly like the original (From a networking and data perspective). I want to essentially move the VM to another storage Pool/Volume within the same NAS.

[@accessrandom]

Thank you. I don't have a video for moving the VM but that's a good idea. I will certainly put it on my list.

[@mofarshchi]

Hi access random, thanks for detailed and perfect "how to". keep up the good work. what I understood from this video I can't have VM and using link agg? I'm I correct?

[@accessrandom]

Thank you! That is correct for QNAP's that have only two ethernet ports like the TS-451 - one of them must be dedicated to the VM so link aggregation is not possible.

[@mofarshchi]

Thanks for quick your replay. If there are 4 ethernet ports, is it possible to make a link aggregation with 3 ports?

[@accessrandom]

Very good question - I believe that would work. I wish I had a definitive answer for you, but unfortunately I couldn't find anyone with that specific use case on QNAP's community forum and I don't have a QNAP with more than two ports that I can test :(

[@mofarshchi]

I have qnap ts 435b. Thinking of getting a PCI e to extend my ethernet ports to 4, I will let you know if I did. do you have any experiences of PCI-e. good day

[@accessrandom]

Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to add any PCIe devices since I have only the TS-451 and the TS-431P. Best of luck...

[@chrish4483]

@AR..great video but a quick question...I have my QNAP setup for dynamic IP addresses from DHCP..Its behind a Ubiquiti Switch which assigns the addresses..Do I need to assign static IP addresses for the networking ports of the QNAP or can I continue to use dynamic assignments and assign a static for my VM or better yet assign the VM a dynamic address? I will only be running this 1 VM for legacy IE and using Microsoft Remote Desktop App to access via an Android tablet.. Thanks in advance

[@accessrandom]

You shouldn't have any problems assigning dynamic IPs for the networking port or the VM. I did that simply because I use IP addresses to remote into the VM with remote desktop connection. However, you can just as easily log into the VM using its hostname instead.

[@aaronmorgan8864]

thank you so much for such a detailed walkthrough. Very helpful. I did have one question, I'm using the QNAP TS-563 that I've upgraded to 16gb of RAM. When I installed the windows 10 VM using your video I noticed my RAM within Virtualization Station is running much higher than yours..around 76% and I've even alotted 12GB of ram to the VM. Any ideas why it might be using so much RAM?

[@accessrandom]

I did a quick experiment on my Server 2016 VM and gave it 12 GB as you did. The memory usage went up to 77% (as opposed to 26% with 2 GB). My theory is that Windows is loading as much of itself in available memory as possible, with more loaded as it's given more memory. My 2 GB configuration is probably swapping out to the pagefile quite a bit...

[@aaronmorgan8864]

access random thank you for the quick reply! Given your experiment results did you notice your VM running any faster when bumping the memory up? Would you assume my VM would run better at 12 than something lower? I noticed in the win10 task manager I’m only using about 25% RAM while the virtualization station shows it’s using 76%

[@accessrandom]

Yes! Subjectively things were running much faster. I should have done this earlier. I run two VMs that could run simultaneously, so I've bumped each of them up to 6 GB. My plan was to run several VMs at 2 GB each but I've realized that's not very realistic on the TS-451 - so I'm only going to use the two. Thanks to the changes I've made due to your comment, I'm running a lot smoother. If you are running only one, I would go with 12 GB. Thank you!

[@aaronmorgan8864]

access random that’s great to hear! Thank you again for your quick replies.

[@piratamorgan2998]

La primera vez que escucho sobre esta plataforma

[@nervegrind3r]

great video, thanks! just an fyi, requirements may have changed for running a vm through virtualization station since this video. I just bought a ts-453Be with 2gb stock memory. I am warned before creating a vm that I need "4gb" instead of 2gb. I can actually go through the process of configuring the vm, but when I click start to boot it, it fails saying not enough memory.

[@accessrandom]

Thanks for pointing that out. I did a little digging on QNAP's website and discovered that the minimum requirement is indeed 4 GB for certain models but i didn't see the TS-453Be on that list. However, this was for Vurtualization Station 1.x and 2.x. I'm still digging for the 3.x requirements but I'm not coming up with anything. I'll keep searching...

[@ashutoshpancholi4366]

We have to ensure that there is approx. 2GB of RAM available to comfortably use features available with this class of Storage QNAP TS-453Be BUT at the same time when we talk of running a Separate Compute Load which comes in picture only after Powering -ON the VM then we must also have provision for the respective OS Loaded within the VM.

[@Duckman99954321]

I currently use the tvs 872 with 4port link agg with 1vm and plans to add a few more I noticed you removed the port trunking to allow the server its own Ip. In my current environment the vm runs and connects just fine but my question, is the virtual switch required and I should I utilize the 10gb port to allow my 4 ports for other workstations

[@accessrandom]

I'm not sure about the QNAPs that have more than two LAN ports, but at least in my case I did need to unlink the link aggregation group to make it work with the VM. Since I use more than one VM plus a container, I had to use a virtual switch so they could share the one physical network port.

[@goddessoftruth]

Hello, I don't have the Virtualization Station on my TS932-PX and cannot see how to get it. Can you please advise me on how I can get it? Thank you.

[@sinisterpisces]

Thank you for this great video. I've got a TS-253D, and I'm trying to set up a VM for OpenSUSE Linux, and I got totally lost trying to figure out how to set up the virtual switch. At one point I was afraid I had knocked it off the network, but it seems to still work. :) A couple of questions: 1. I wanted to confirm it's not possible to do this with the two 2.5Gb ethernet ports trunked together into one 5 GbE port. Does each virtual switch (including the default gateway) need its own dedicated wired ethernet connection to the network? 2. If yes to (1), is that unique to using Virtualization Station? I'd like to also run some docker containers from time to time using docker-compose from the command line, and there's already a separate Virtual Switch for docker0 that was set up by Container Station. It doesn't have a physical, virtual, or member value, though, so I'm not sure it works. Thanks again!

[@accessrandom]

Virtualization Station needs one of the ports dedicated to it (at least at the time I did it in the video), so you'll need to un-bind the two ports. When I tried to set up Virtualization Station with the two ports aggregated, it required me to undo that. I believe this also holds true for Container Station.

[@sinisterpisces]

@@accessrandom Thanks! I haven't actually tried getting any docker containers up yet, so I'll keep that in mind, as well.

[@sinisterpisces]

@@accessrandom An update: I tried connecting two different USB-to-Ethernet adapters to the USB 3.0 port, but apparently the QNAP Linux distro doesn't have the drivers for either of them.

[@accessrandom]

@@sinisterpisces Thanks for the tip. I'm guess it makes sense that QNAP would place restrictions since they probably don't want to support non-QNAP hardware.

[@sinisterpisces]

@@accessrandom They would prefer you buy their own 80 USD 5GbE USB 3.0 dongle, yes. It's a bit aggravating, as the 2.5GbE ports on the TS-253D are Realtek 8125 chipset devices, and the dongles I'm trying to use are Realtek devices, so it's not like there aren't Linux drivers available for them.

[@constamusic]

That's a great video tutorial, but I have a question, I want to know how many VMs can I install and keep connected and online 24/7 in a QNAP TS-451+-8G-US 4 Bay Next Gen Intel 2.0 GHz Quad-Core CPU... Thank's if you can answer my question!!!

[@accessrandom]

I'm not sure about the TS-451+, but on my TS-451 I run just one since the processor is quite slow. I think it will also depend on how you plan to use the VMs. You'll probably want to install Virtio drivers to speed things up regardless (explained in one of my other videos here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i3_ZdpR4fMhqacU).

[@LibibLenonon]

tengo qnap ts-253a y necesito instalar windows server 2012 r2. Alguien que sepa como please! Help me

[@Evolze]

Hi there, and sorry for commenting on an old video! I just came across this video and had a question regarding virtual switch setup. I attempted to use a Windows Server VM on my QNAP NAS to create a home lab environment where I could use Active Directory to create AD accounts. It all worked out, and everything was good. When looking back, I created one virtual switch that went directly to my real network (Virtual Switch 1 -> Physical Adapter 1 -> Gateway/Internet). My question is: Why would one want to create a virtual switch that connects to the second adapter on the NAS? From the diagram, is it so that virtual machines are not connected to the internet and that they are isolated from the network? I'm a bit confused and need a bit of clarification as it looks like your Windows Server environment could connect to the internet just fine (as seen in the video). I currently do not use the second port on my NAS but am confused as I'm trying to setup containers and I'm wanting to make sure I'm doing everything correctly.

[@accessrandom]

To be honest, the only reason I recall was because I couldn't use Virtualization Station simultaneously with link aggregation (binding the two ports together). I believe I wanted to separate the VM traffic from the main NAS traffic...

[@itsmetee466]

@@accessrandom HI i am also a bit curious about this. Are there any benefits/advantage to do so. To separate the VM traffic.

[@suribonk]

Thanks for the tutorial! Problem: After i'm done installing a Windows 10 VM when i open Chrome or Edge browser in the VM i can do a Google search and get results but any website i want to open will tell me This site can’t be reached/the connection was reset. This is weird because i can normally ping to websites so DNS is working fine. Also the VM is extremely slow, i can see the CPU of the QNAP self is overloaded just by this single VM even though i have set only 1 core and 2GB RAM.

[@accessrandom]

I also found the performance unbearable until I assigned it 6 to 8 GB (it's still slow but it is usable - I use it on a daily basis). For the internet problems, are you able to see the other computers on your local network? Are you able to reach Google's IP address in Chrome within the VM (after doing an IP nslookup outside the VM)?

[@sinisterpisces]

@access random Thanks again. I just finished setting up an OpenSUSE 4GB/48GB/2 Core VM on my TS-253D. I still need to configure it, but everything worked perfectly once I de-LAG'd the ethernet ports on the NAS. I noticed you did not activate DHCP or NAT on the virtual switch. Is that just because you're using static IPs, or was there another reason? Unless there's a reason I shouldn't, I'd like to have the virtual switch on its own subnet, just to make it a bit easier to recognize it by IP and possibly set up access restrictions later. If I wanted to do that, would I need activate both DHCP and NAT, or just one or the other?

[@accessrandom]

I typically assign all my devices a static IP, so I bypass the DHCP server. There's no reason why you couldn't use dynamic IPs.

[@sinisterpisces]

@@accessrandom Cool. I'll definitely play with it more this weekend. I'm using DHCP with IP reservations. I realize it's a bit more overhead, but it lets me put static IPs on machines in my network that are used by non-techies who don't have any idea what an IP address is, and manage it all from the router without anyone noticing anything.

[@metoo7587]

Sir, I finally got around to install Windows 10 Pro in a VM on my QNAP TS-453 with 16Gb RAM, but the result is terrible. The speed at which the Windows WM runs makes it completely unusable for any purpose. It doesn't matter whether I use browser access og RDP access. I have exactly the same experience after installing Ubuntu in a VM. It too runs very slow. What can I possibly have done wrong?

[@christianpaez4582]

lets say you install your OS on a 1 TB SSD located in bay 1 can you assign it additional 1 TB located in a different bay?

[@accessrandom]

Yes, you can add additional hard drives by going to the Settings -> Storage and clicking "Add Device". You'll be able to add a folder from a different bay drive.

[@AshishSingh-qq5rv]

Can you tell me why VM is so high on resources. I have 8GB total RAM and 6GB assigned to VM. There aren't that many applications running on VM but the resource use is like 90% RAM.

[@accessrandom]

Are you using Windows in the VM? If so, are there any high-memory applications or DLLs in the task manager?

[@sinisterpisces]

Is there a limitation on how many VMs we can create? I just tried to set up a second one, and it's telling me I need to create a virtual switch before creating a virtual machine. Since I've already got a virtual machine running on the virtual switch I set up, I'm ... pretty confused.

[@accessrandom]

I have run two VMs at the same time before, and I don't believe there's a limit. For additional VMs, you do need to route each one through the existing virtual switch.

[@sinisterpisces]

​@@accessrandom I'm glad to hear that. I assumed I'd route them all through the same switch, but it doesn't give me an option. I get a box telling me I need to create a virtual switch, and as soon as I click OK it takes me to the screen to create more virtual switches. I wonder if I should try Importing an ISO file, instead.

[@sinisterpisces]

@@accessrandom It's working now, and I can't begin to tell you why. I modified some settings on the virtual switch, and then changed them back to what they were, and I guess that made it realize there was a virtual switch after all?

[@accessrandom]

@@sinisterpisces Thanks for the update - I'm glad you got it working. That's really strange - maybe it's a bug?

[@sinisterpisces]

@@accessrandom Must be a bug. After I restarted (or maybe after I just got angry enough to frighten it :-) ) it started working again and let me create the second VM.

[@AngeloValdezlovejesus]

Is Virtualization Station considered as Hypervisor like VM Ware , Citrix?

[@accessrandom]

Yes, Virtualization Station is a hypervisor (based on QEMU).

[@AngeloValdezlovejesus]

@@accessrandom thanks

[@francescostefanile5613]

HY MY Friend, francesco from italy...today i tried to install vm on a ssd....this solution its much faster...did you try it?

[@accessrandom]

Ciao! Yes, on my PCs I install VMs in VirtualBox on SSDs but on the QNAP I use it mainly for storage and secondarily for VMs. Maybe when the 2TB SSDs come down in price 🙂

[@francescostefanile5613]

@@accessrandom o yes you have right.you can give me some advice, as I said I installed the VM on an SSD but to do it I had to put the SSD in slot 1 and install the operating system on it, only after I managed to install the VM on the SSD because if I put it in the 6 slot (ts 670 pro) was dedicated as casche and therefore impossible to install it there .. do you have any ideas to better configure my ts 670 pro?

[@accessrandom]

@@francescostefanile5613 I'm afraid I don't have any experience with the TS-670 Pro. However, it sounds like you configured it correctly since you want both QTS and any VMs on the SSD (so the first slot makes sense to me). I'll defer to other viewers who may have more experience with the TS-670 - anyone?

[@OliverWolter]

it will accept 32 GB of RAM , even though only 8 GB are officially certified - but only with certain RAMs

[@accessrandom]

Thank you. Do you have the model number of the memory you've tried by any chance? I can add it to the description with credit to you.

[@johnjohansson]

I only have one physical interface, how do I do this then?

[@accessrandom]

Do you mean the networking interface? I'm afraid I haven't considered that use case since all my QNAPs have two, but I believe you would need to set up a virtual network and share it between the host and the guest.

[@altatrinitabeatada]

Is it possible to install a VM on a TS-469U

[@accessrandom]

It looks like this is a rack mount unit with which I'm afraid I have no experience - I'll need to defer to other viewers who may know more. Anyone?

[@altatrinitabeatada]

@@accessrandom thank you for your answer. I found the Information, that Atom processors are not supportet. So sadly I can't use Virtualization Station.

[@letheisle1348]

great video, thank you...before i give this a try, i see in your description it says to be able to remote desktop from any machine on the network...is there a way to remote desktop in from a machine outside the local network if i want to get in while away from home?

[@accessrandom]

Thank you. Yes, there are a couple ways to remote into your network from an external PC - one way is to open a port in the firewall and make sure you only allow your username to access it (if you google "remote desktop firewall" there are several sites that explain how). It's a bit unsafe though, since you're exposing your network to the outside. A safter way would be to use VPN.