Filter
Top Products
White Paper
11
CREATING AN NFS DATASTORE ON ESX SERVER
VMware Infrastructure 3 management utilities are used to configure and mount NFS shares from the StorCenter ix4-
200r. The VI client is also used to assign a datastore name to the export. The datastore name is the key reference that
is used to manage the datastore within the ESX environment.
The NFS datastore is viewed as a pool of storage space to support virtual disks. One or more virtual disks are created
within the datastore and assigned to virtual machines. Each virtual machine will use the primary virtual disk to install
the guest operating system and boot information. The additional disks are used to support application and user data.
By default, the ESX Server allows a maximum of eight NFS datastores to be created. To create more NFS datastores,
please change the NFS.MaxVolumes setting to a number no greater than 32. The following settings are recommended
for NFS connections:
NFS.MaxVolumes = 32
NFS.HeartbeatFrequency = 12
NFS.HeartbeatTimeout = 5
NFS.HeartbeatMaxFailures = 10
Net.TcpipHeapSize = 30
The three heartbeat options control heartbeat counts and timeouts. In the event of a brief network connection loss,
reboot, or failure of the NFS server, the ESX Server will not simply fail the NFS datastores. The NFS client in ESX relies
on heartbeats to verify the NFS shares are available. Therefore, increasing the NFS heartbeat frequency will ensure the
NFS datastore I/O can resume much sooner, once the NFS server comes back.
Figure 12 Modify NFS options on ESX Server
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5