mount nfs on ESXi Hosts vs on Virtual Machines

[andvm]

Hi,

Does VMware has any recommendation in terms of whether NFS shares are mounted on ESXI Hosts vs directly on virtual machines?

Both look to be fine as long as the NFS is on a dedicated VLAN but want to be sure I am following reccomendation if the nfs shares are mounted on virtual machines.

Thanks

[scott28tt]

It’s usually simpler from a vSphere administrative perspective to mount NFS from the host and have the VMs store their data inside VMDKs - the same as you would when using FC or iSCSI (as opposed to using RDMs)

[depping]

What are you trying to achieve? Mounting NFS within the VM vs mounting is to the host are two completely different use cases usually?

[andvm]

multiple VM's require access to the same 2 or 3 NFS Shares

[depping]

You mean the applications or users of the VM need access to it? If so, then you expose the NFS share directly to the VM. So you mount it from within the VM. that way (assuming permissions etc are correctly configured) they can all access the same data. When you mount the NFS share to the ESXi host, all HOSTS can access the same data and create VMs on top of the share, which is a different usecase.

[andvm]

correct, the applications such as for logging and backups from the virtual machine OS.

Thank you for clarifying as thought they both achieved the same outcome.