Managing NFS/NAS Datastores

ESXi hosts can access a designated NFS volume located on a NAS (Network Attached Storage) server, can mount the volume, and can use it for its storage needs. You can use NFS volumes to store and boot virtual machines in the same way that you use VMFS datastores.

Capabilities Supported by NFS/NAS

An NFS client built into the ESXi hypervisor uses the Network File System (NFS) protocol over TCP/IP to access a designated NFS volume that is located on a NAS server. The ESXi host can mount the volume and use it for its storage needs. vSphere supports versions 3 and 4.1 of the NFS protocol.

Typically, the NFS volume or directory is created by a storage administrator and is exported form the NFS server. The NFS volume does not need to be formatted with a local file system, such as VMFS. You can mount the volume directly on ESXi hosts, and use it to store and boot virtual machines in the same way that you use VMFS datastores.

In addition to storing virtual disks on NFS datastores, you can also use NFS as a central repository for ISO images, virtual machine templates, and so on. If you use the datastore for ISO images, you can connect the virtual machine's CD-ROM device to an ISO file on the datastore and install a guest operating system from the ISO file.

ESXi hosts support the following shared storage capabilities on NFS volumes:

■	VMware vMotion and Storage vMotion

■	High Availability (HA), Fault Tolerance, and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

■	ISO images, which are presented as CD-ROMs to virtual machines

■	Virtual machine snapshots

■	Host profiles

■

Virtual machines with large capacity virtual disks, or disks greater than 2TB. Virtual disks created on NFS datastores are thin-provisioned by default, unless you use hardware acceleration that supports the Reserve Space operation. NFS 4.1 does not support hardware acceleration. See “Hardware Acceleration on NAS Devices” in the vSphere Storage documentation.

In addition to storing virtual disks on NFS datastores, you can also use NFS as a central repository for ISO images, virtual machine templates, and so on.

To use NFS as a shared repository, you create a directory on the NFS server and then mount the directory as a datastore on all hosts. If you use the datastore for ISO images, you can connect the virtual machine's CD-ROM device to an ISO file on the datastore and install a guest operating system from the ISO file.

Adding and Deleting NAS File Systems

You can list, add, and delete a NAS file system with ESXCLI or with vicfg-nas.

Managing NAS File Systems with ESXCLI

You can use ESXCLI as a vCLI command with connection options (see Connection Options for vCLI Host Management Commands) or in the ESXi shell.

To manage a NAS file system

1	List all known NAS file systems.

esxcli <conn_options> storage nfs list

For each NAS file system, the command lists the mount name, share name, and host name and whether the file system is mounted.

If no NAS file systems are available, the system does not return a NAS filesystem and returns to the command prompt.

2	Add a new NAS file system to the ESXi host. Specify the NAS server with --host, the volume to use for the mount with --volume-name, and the share name on the remote system to use for this NAS mount point with --share.

esxcli <conn_options> storage nfs add --host=dir42.eng.vmware.com --share=/<mount_dir> --volume-name=nfsstore-dir42

This command adds an entry to the known NAS file system list and supplies the share name of the new NAS file system. You must supply the host name, share name, and volume name for the new NAS file system.

3	Add a second NAS file system with read-only access.

esxcli <conn_options> storage nfs add --host=dir42.eng.vmware.com --share=/home --volume-name=FileServerHome2 --readonly

4	Delete one of the NAS file systems.

esxcli <conn_options> storage nfs remove --volume-name=FileServerHome2

This command unmounts the NAS file system and removes it from the list of known file systems.

Managing NAS File Systems with vicfg-nas

You can use vicfg-nas as a vCLI command with connection options. See Connection Options for vCLI Host Management Commands.

To manage a NAS file system

1	List all known NAS file systems.

vicfg-nas <conn_options> -l

For each NAS file system, the command lists the mount name, share name, and host name and whether the file system is mounted. If no NAS file systems are available, the system returns the following message:

No NAS datastore found

2	Add a new NAS file system to the ESXi host.

vicfg-nas <conn_options --add --nasserver dir42.eng.vmware.com -s /<mount_dir> nfsstore-dir42

This command adds an entry to the known NAS file system list and supplies the share name of the new NAS file system. You must supply the host name and the share name for the new NAS file system.

3	Add a second NAS file system with read-only access.

vicfg-nas <conn_options> -a -y --n esx42nas2 -s /home FileServerHome2

4	Delete one of the NAS file systems.

vicfg-nas <conn_options> -d FileServerHome1

This command unmounts the NAS file system and removes it from the list of known file systems.