You must perform several configuration steps before you mount an NFS datastore in vSphere.

Prerequisites

  • Familiarize yourself with the guidelines in Guidelines and Requirements for NFS Storage with ESXi.
  • For details on configuring NFS storage, consult your storage vendor documentation.
  • If you use Kerberos, make sure that AES256-CTS-HMAC-SHA1-96 or AES128-CTS-HMAC-SHA1-96 are enabled on the NAS server.

Procedure

  1. On the NFS server, configure an NFS volume and export it to be mounted on the ESXi hosts.
    1. Note the IP address or the DNS name of the NFS server and the full path, or folder name, for the NFS share.
      For NFS 4.1, you can collect multiple IP addresses or DNS names to use the multipathing support that the NFS 4.1 datastore provides.
    2. If you plan to use Kerberos authentication with NFS 4.1, specify the Kerberos credentials to be used by ESXi for authentication.
  2. On each ESXi host, configure a VMkernel Network port for NFS traffic.
    For more information, see the vSphere Networking documentation.
  3. If you plan to use Kerberos authentication with the NFS 4.1 datastore, configure the ESXi hosts for Kerberos authentication.
    See Configure ESXi Hosts for Kerberos Authentication.

What to do next

You can now create an NFS datastore on the ESXi hosts. See Create an NFS Datastore in vSphere Environment.