NAS for Windows VM and transcoding

I am in a process of buying my first NAS, I watched a lot of your videos on youtube and so far I have selected DS218+, so far so good, but I am not sure if the dual-core Intel celeron will be good to enough to handle my needs. Here is what I am planning to do:

1. Create a VM with Windows 7 and MS – nothing else, but I plan this VM to be online 24/7 if I need to use MS office. I have Linux on all my machines at home with Libre office and so on, sometimes it is quite tricky to work with…

2. Use the NAS for data storage

3. Use the NAS for Plex transcoding and so on

4. Installing two surveillance wifi cameras and managing them through the NAS

5. Eventually hosting a small website, nothing fancy and big, just something DIY in my free time

My goal is at any time to be able to have good performance without lagging if I need to use any of those functionalities above all together, and of course, I plan on using the NAS for several years. I will definitely put an extract RAM. If you can advise on amount will be just great?

Maybe I am wrong, but somehow all those things sound like two much on a dual core CPU? (I do not need expansion capabilities, 2 bay NAS is what I need).

Do you think that Ds218+ can handle all I mentioned above, or I need to opt for Ds718+

The DS218+ will not be a good choice. You need to look at DS718+ or DS918+ (perfect as a web server) as a minimum. Plex transcoding is a very heavy task to do. During those times you VM will be extremely slow. And another way around, once you allocate resources to your VM, there is not much left for Plex. Surveillance is not that demanding, but will keep disks busy anyway. Same thing with backups.

I would personally get DS918+ and put 2 or 3 drive inside. And also maximum RAM you can afford.

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