VMware Cloud Community
hout
Contributor
Contributor
‎12-05-2012 12:35 AM

esxi 5.1 - Unable to connect to NFS server - FreeNAS-8.3.0-RELEASE-x86

I get "Unable to connect to NFS server"  when I try to connect to FreeNAS NFS share using ESXi 5.1, but both can connect to NFS share on linux. Further linux can connect to the share on FreeNAS. I think it is some setting or protocol thing between ESXi and FreeNAS 8.2. Any help would be appreciated.

The exact error is:

Call "HostDatastoreSystem.CreateNasDatastore" for object "ha-datastoresystem" on ESXi "192.168.0.242" failed.
NFS mount 192.168.0.239:/mnt/array1 failed: Unable to connect to NFS server.

Also get similar error an ESXi 3.51 server.

IP#: esxi 3.51 192.168.0.241 / esxi 5.1 192.168.0.242 /  FreeNAS 192.168.0.239 (not virtual) / linux vm (on esxi 3.51) 192.168.0.249

I have checked the following actions

  • vmkping 192.168.0.239 (freeNAS IP) and get response on both esxi 3.51 & 5.1
  • I have checked ESXi5.1 firewall and made sure outgoing NFS connection is enable.
  • I can connect to an NFS share on a linux box via both ESX 3.51 & 5.1 (same 192.168.0.0/24 network)
  • I can also connect to the FreeNAS share from linux box and virtual linux machine (same 192.168.0.0/24 network)
  • the FreeNAS can ping the esxi servers
  • reverse DNS is working on FreeNAS (ie the IP of ESXi boxes gets resolved to a name)
  • the ip of the esxi boxes is in the Authorized networks
  • I have set "Map User" to root in FreeNAS. I dont know how to set no_root_squash in FreeNAS or BSD shell.

Here is the /etc/export file for the FreeNAS

/mnt/array1  -alldirs -maproot=root: -network 192.168.0.0/24

    0 Kudos
    5 Replies
    admin
    Immortal
    Immortal
    ‎12-05-2012 12:56 AM

    Could you please paste output of following commands, from 5.1 host

    esxcli network interface

    esxcli network vswitch standard

    nc -z <NAS SERVER IP> 2049

    0 Kudos
    hout
    Contributor
    Contributor
    ‎12-05-2012 11:27 PM

    Thank you for your reply. I zapped my shares which where formated as UFS and reformated as ZFS and all is good. I guess linux can mount ufs and esx can mount ext2 or zfs but not ufs.

    p.s. The commands you asked me to run dont work.

    0 Kudos
    helux
    Contributor
    Contributor
    ‎12-06-2012 12:56 AM

    it looks like it is a bug in freenas.

    when mounting as nfs filesystem, the client which is connecting, is not connecting it as a local filesystem like ext2/3, ufs or zfs. it is mounting it as a nfs filesystem.

    esxi is not able to mount zfs volumes, but is able to mount nfs volumes.

    zfs is a way better filesystem and way more flexible then ufs on freenas so keep it that way....

    0 Kudos
    hout
    Contributor
    Contributor
    ‎12-06-2012 12:44 PM

    thanks for your reply. I understand ZFS is better, but this machine has only 1GB of RAM. I was hoping to get better performance. I am only using it for backup of VM's via SSH vmkfstools command, so I can move vm to another host in case the host dies.

    0 Kudos
    alwang1234
    Contributor
    Contributor
    ‎01-09-2013 07:21 PM

    Not sure if the problem is resolved.  Adding my part of discovery.

    In the FreeNas AdminGUI, try to "Maproot User" and "Maproot Group" to "root" and "wheel" respectively.  I was able to get ESXi 5.1 to access FreeNAS-8.3.0 exported NFS datastore after I did both mappings.  Installed a Ubuntu VM with the NFS datastore.

    [root@freenas] ~# cat /etc/exports

    /mnt/freenas_vol1 -alldirs -maproot=root:wheel -nework 192.168.1.0/24

    0 Kudos