Files: Create NFS Export

Overview

In this exercise you will create and test a NFSv4 export, used to support clustered applications, store application data such as logging, or storing other unstructured file data commonly accessed by Linux clients.

Using NFS Exports

Enabling NFS Protocol

Note

Enabling NFS protocol only needs to be performed once per Files server, and may have already been completed in your environment. If NFS is already enabled, proceed to Creating the Export.

1. In Prism Element > File Server, select your file server and click Protocol Management > Directory Services.

   

2. Select Use NFS Protocol with Unmanaged User Management and Authentication, and click Update.

   

Creating the Export

1. In Prism > File Server, click + Share/Export.

2. Fill out the following fields:

   • Name - logs

   • Description (Optional) - File share for system logs

   • File Server - BootcampFS

   • Share Path (Optional) - Leave blank

   • Max Size (Optional) - Leave blank

   • Select Protocol - NFS

   

3. Click Next.

4. Fill out the following fields:

   • Select Enable Self Service Restore

     • These snapshots appear as a .snapshot directory for NFS clients.

   • Authentication - System

   • Default Access (For All Clients) - No Access

   • Select + Add exceptions

   • Clients with Read-Write Access - The first 3 octets of your cluster network.* (e.g. 10.38.1.*)

   

   By default an NFS export will allow read/write access to any host that mounts the export, but this can be restricted to specific IPs or IP ranges.

5. Click Next.

6. Review the Summary and click Create.

Testing the Export

You will first provision a CentOS VM to use as a client for your Files export.

Note

If you have already deployed the Linux Tools VM as part of another lab, you may use this VM as your NFS client instead.

1. In Prism > VM > Table, click + Create VM.

2. Fill out the following fields:

   • Name - Initials-NFS-Client

   • Description - CentOS VM for testing Files NFS export

   • vCPU(s) - 2

   • Number of Cores per vCPU - 1

   • Memory - 2 GiB

   • Select + Add New Disk

     • Operation - Clone from Image Service

     • Image - CentOS

     • Select Add

   • Select Add New NIC

     • VLAN Name - Secondary

     • Select Add

3. Click Save.

4. Select the Initials-NFS-Client VM and click Power on.

5. Note the IP address of the VM in Prism, and connect via SSH using the following credentials:

   • Username - root

   • Password - nutanix/4u

6. Execute the following:

   [root@CentOS ~]# yum install -y nfs-utils #This installs the NFSv4 client
   [root@CentOS ~]# mkdir /filesmnt
   [root@CentOS ~]# mount.nfs4 BootcampFS.ntnxlab.local:/ /filesmnt/
   [root@CentOS ~]# df -kh
   Filesystem                      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
   /dev/mapper/centos_centos-root  8.5G  1.7G  6.8G  20% /
   devtmpfs                        1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev
   tmpfs                           1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev/shm
   tmpfs                           1.9G   17M  1.9G   1% /run
   tmpfs                           1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
   /dev/sda1                       494M  141M  353M  29% /boot
   tmpfs                           377M     0  377M   0% /run/user/0
   BootcampFS.ntnxlab.local:/             1.0T  7.0M  1.0T   1% /afsmnt
   [root@CentOS ~]# ls -l /filesmnt/
   total 1
   drwxrwxrwx. 2 root root 2 Mar  9 18:53 logs
   

7. Observe that the logs directory is mounted in /filesmnt/logs.

8. Reboot the VM and observe the export is no longer mounted. To persist the mount, add it to /etc/fstab by executing the following:

   echo 'BootcampFS.ntnxlab.local:/ /filesmnt nfs4' >> /etc/fstab
   

9. The following command will add 100 2MB files filled with random data to /filesmnt/logs:

   mkdir /filesmnt/logs/host1
   for i in {1..100}; do dd if=/dev/urandom bs=8k count=256 of=/filesmnt/logs/host1/file$i; done
   

10. Return to Prism > File Server > Share > logs to monitor performance and usage.

    Note that the utilization data is updated every 10 minutes.