6.0

n
NFS 3 and non-Kerberos NFS 4.1 do not support the delegate user functionality that enables access to
NFS volumes using nonroot credentials. If you use NFS 3 or non-Kerberos NFS 4.1, ensure that each
host has root access to the volume. Dierent storage vendors have dierent methods of enabling this
functionality, but typically this is done on the NAS servers by using the no_root_squash option. If the
NAS server does not grant root access, you might still be able to mount the NFS datastore on the host.
However, you will not be able to create any virtual machines on the datastore.
n
If the underlying NFS volume, on which les are stored, is read-only, make sure that the volume is
exported as a read-only share by the NFS server, or congure it as a read-only datastore on the ESXi
host. Otherwise, the host considers the datastore to be read-write and might not be able to open the
les.
NFS Networking Guidelines
n
For network connectivity, the host requires a standard network adapter.
n
ESXi supports Layer 2 and Layer 3 Network switches. If you use Layer 3 switches, ESXi hosts and NFS
storage arrays must be on dierent subnets and the network switch must handle the routing
information.
n
A VMkernel port group is required for NFS storage. You can create a new VMkernel port group for IP
storage on an already existing virtual switch (vSwitch) or on a new vSwitch when it is congured. The
vSwitch can be a vSphere Standard Switch (VSS) or a vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS).
n
If you use multiple ports for NFS trac, make sure that you correctly congure your virtual switches
and physical switches. For information, see the vSphere Networking documentation.
n
NFS 3 and non-Kerberos NFS 4.1 support IPv4 and IPv6.
NFS Datastore Guidelines
n
To use NFS 4.1, upgrade your vSphere environment to version 6.x. You cannot mount an NFS 4.1
datastore to hosts that do not support version 4.1.
n
You cannot use dierent NFS versions to mount the same datastore. NFS 3 and NFS 4.1 clients do not
use the same locking protocol. As a result, accessing the same virtual disks from two incompatible
clients might result in incorrect behavior and cause data corruption.
n
NFS 3 and NFS 4.1 datastores can coexist on the same host.
n
vSphere does not support datastore upgrades from NFS version 3 to version 4.1.
n
When you mount the same NFS 3 volume on dierent hosts, make sure that the server and folder
names are identical across the hosts. If the names do not match, the hosts see the same NFS version 3
volume as two dierent datastores. This error might result in a failure of such features as vMotion. An
example of such discrepancy is entering filer as the server name on one host and filer.domain.com on
the other. This guideline does not apply to NFS version 4.1.
n
If you use non-ASCII characters to name datastores and virtual machines, make sure that the
underlying NFS server oers internationalization support. If the server does not support international
characters, use only ASCII characters, or unpredictable failures might occur.
Mount an NFS Datastore in the VMware Host Client
Use the New datastore wizard to mount a Network File System (NFS) datastore in the VMware Host Client.
Prerequisites
Because NFS requires network connectivity to access data on remote servers, before conguring NFS, you
must rst congure VMkernel networking.
vSphere Single Host Management - VMware Host Client
88 VMware, Inc.