In this example I will look at creating an NFS datastore using both esxcfg command line interface and PowerCLI to which I will use the following parameters.
- Datastore Name: openfiler-nfs2
- NFS Host: 10.0.0.6
- NFS mount point: /mnt/nfs/nfs2/vmfs/
By connecting to an ESXi hosts console session we can invoke the esxcfg command line interface to create the new NFS datastore by invoking the esxcfg-nas switch.
esxcfg-nas -a openfiler-nfs2 -o 10.0.0.6 -s /mnt/nfs/nfs2/vmfs/
Once created, you should receive confirmation the NAS datastore has been created and connected as below:
Connecting to NAS volume: openfiler-nfs2 openfiler-nfs2 created and connected openfiler-nfs2 is /mnt/nfs/nfs2/vmfs/ from 10.0.0.6 mounted available
We can remove the NFS datastore by invoking the ‘esxcfg-nas -d’ and specifying the datastore name.
esxcfg-nas -d openfiler-nfs2
To which on deletion you will receive confirmation as below.
NAS volume openfiler-nfs2 deleted.
Alternatively using PowerCLI we can invoke the New-Datastore cmdlet to create a new NFS datastore on the ESXi Host ‘deanesxi1.dean.local’.
New-Datastore -VMHost deanesxi1.dean.local -Nfs -Name openfiler-nfs2 -NfsHost 10.0.0.6 -Path /mnt/nfs/nfs2/vmfs/
To confirm the NFS datastore has been create we can invoke the Get-Datastore cmdlet to retrieve a collection of datastore where the type is ‘NFS’.
Get-Datastore | where {$_.type -eq "NFS"}
As below, we can confirm the new NFS datastore has been created.
Name FreeSpaceGB CapacityGB ---- ----------- ---------- openfiler-nfs2 21.271 21.302
In order to remove a NFS datastore we can invoke the Remove-Datastore cmdlet to specify the datastore to remove on the ESXi host, where I am invoking the command without requiring user confirmation.
Remove-Datastore -Datastore openfiler-nfs2 -VMHost deanesxi1.dean.local -Confirm:$False
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