Mike Best's picture

I set up a dedicated server running TKL File Server with 2 x 2TB Sata drives. I want to use this server as a low-cost NAS. 

I've set up samba to sync with users and have been able to connect to the drives in Windows.

My problem is I don't know how to use it as a datastore for my VMWare ESXi4 hosts. I have 2 storage locations already created for guests with RW for 2 users storage and storage2.

/srv/storage on sda1

/home2/storage2 on sdb1

when I df here is what it looks like:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on                                                                                                                                        
/dev/mapper/turnkey-root                                                                                                                                                                      
                      1.8T  1.3G  1.7T   1% /                                                                                                                                                 
none                  496M  204K  496M   1% /dev                                                                                                                                              
none                  502M     0  502M   0% /dev/shm                                                                                                                                          
none                  502M  476K  501M   1% /var/run                                                                                                                                          
none                  502M     0  502M   0% /var/lock                                                                                                                                         
none                  502M     0  502M   0% /lib/init/rw                                                                                                                                      
/dev/mapper/groupb-volumeb                                                                                                                                                                    
                      1.8T  196M  1.7T   1% /home2                                                                                                                                            
/dev/sda2             229M   18M  200M   8% /boot                                                                                                                                             
root@fileserver ~#     

I am using vSphere Client Version 4.0.0 to manage the ESXi hosts

I have been able to connect my 1TB WD World Book this way so I know it can be done.

The ESXi host IP is 10.10.10.20 and the fileserver is 10.10.10.5

Here is the error I receive when I try to connect:

Create NAS datastore
10.10.10.20
Error during the configuration of the host: NFS Error
: Unable to Mount filesystem: Unable to connect to 
NFS server
mikebest66
VM002
5/11/2011 9:45:59 AM
5/11/2011 9:46:00 AM
5/11/2011 9:46:31 AM

My guess this is a permissions issue but I don't see how I can give the username and password to fileserver in vSphere when I try to connect the datastore.

Can I allow all IP's in the 10.10.0.0/8 range access on the file server?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Forum: 
Jeremy Davis's picture

AFAIK NFS is not setup by default in any of the TKL appliances. My guess is that that is the problem:

Error during the configuration of the host: NFS Error
: Unable to Mount filesystem: Unable to connect to 
NFS server

Mike Best's picture

I used this tutorial to set it up:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpNFSHowTo

Jeremy Davis's picture

That Ubuntu tute should do the trick but I'm not sure what OS vSphere is based on and whether NFS client services are already enabled. Also double check network connectivity.

It may be worth posting on the Ubuntu forums too as perhaps someone else has had a similar problem.

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