Adding an NFS (Network File System) datastore to an ESXi server is easy. In this note, I’ll be using a QNAP TS 209 PRO NAS drive, but most NAS drives have similar configurations. I don’t recommend using as a storage location for production servers (use iSCSI for that, why?), I find it best used as a storage location for ISO images I used to load my systems.
Heres: how its done:
1. Enable the NFS Service in your NAS device. QNAP looks like this:
2. Create and set the permissions on your NFS share. This is just like creating any other share on your QNAP device, If you need details, see your QNAP documentation.
3. Set the NFS Access Control. Here you can limit access to the share by IP address, IP range or Domain Name and whether the files are read only of full control. I chose to allow all IP’s and set the Access Rights to “No Limits”, thus allowing all computers on my network full control of the share.
4. Now to the ESXi Server. Select the Host you wish to add the NFS share to and go to the configuration tab, then select storage. Now you can click on “Add Storage”
5. We will select Network File System (NFS):
6. Add your host machine name or IP address and share name, the give it a name. I like to add info about wich host machine the share is located on for quick reference. Notice the Mount NFS read only check box, you can use this if you want to prevent changes to your files. Since I am the only one administering this network, I chose to leave this off.
7. After you click next, ESXi will create the datastore and Viola! your new datastore is now ready for use.
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