Are there ready-made NAS + Virtualbox products?

Question

virtual box

I have been wanting to buy a NAS for a long time. But only one stops. I need to spin several (2-3) virtual machines not very quickly. Especially strong iron is not needed for these purposes. Even two nuclear Intel Atom 1.6 with 8Gb of memory would satisfy me. Finding NASes with a suitable processor is not a problem, but things are much worse with memory and usually it is no more than 1Gb.
I fully understand that the purpose of the NAS is to store data. But I do not want to have a separate piece of hardware for virtual machines just because there is not enough memory.
You can also assemble everything yourself, but you don’t want to suffer with the selection of pieces of iron and then with the installation of the necessary software.
Desirable solutions on free software. Those. linux + virtual box for up to $700.
I like the solutions from Synology for their size and the software they offer. If it is possible to add memory to them and then install from the virtual box?

Answer 1

Honestly, I don’t know what the recommended RAM parameters are, of course, but there is the OMV (Open Media Vault) project, there is debian as an OS and a hypervisor from Vbox and all NAS functions, you can configure up and down. Of course, the web interface is the same as for the NAS functionality itself, and for Vbox. And of course the system is free and open.
It has been working at the enterprise for a year (though without virtual machines), no problems were noticed (except for the general influx of viruses, I had to install an antivirus and check the file washer every night). But the characteristics of the server are slightly different. 12gb ram and 4 xeon threads. For 20 hard drives, it’s quite enough for itself (software arrays, since omv can do it).

Answer 2

On many thecus nas you can change the memory chip from 1 to 4-8 gigs.

Answer 3

virtualBox on NAS4Free
In general, I advise you to look at this blog , there is a lot of interesting information about homemade NAS, including variations on the theme of virtual machines.

Answer 4

@zipo You are advised correctly. Synology is highly praised. After reading reviews and articles, I decided to take a ds414. The price tag on it is just yours. But to be honest, I'm not very impressed
. Prots all the time at 100%..
Of the pluses, except for the shell .. Thought out almost to the smallest detail.
ssh is open, third-party software is not a problem. But... Under their prots there is very little software. Even ffserver couldn't deliver for streaming video encoding.
For multimedia and how a file washer will do. But for virtual machines and normal performance, take HP as you are advised. There you can put XPenology. You will have both cool performance and a shell from Synology ..