Sharing a datastore as a NFS volume

[MariusRoma]

Imagine an ESXi host with local disks used as VMFS datastores.

Is there any way to allow other ESXi hosts access the local VMFS datastores as NFS shares?

A consultant says it should be possible, but I was unable to locate the related documentation.

Can anybody please help?

Regards

marius

[SupreetK]

Assuming datastore1 is the local datastore on ESXi-1, install a FreeNAS VM on the local datastore and create NAS shares from the FreeNAS. Disk for the FreeNAS VM (which will be used for creating NAS share once it is installed) will be residing on the ESXi local datastore. With proper networking in place, this NAS share should be accessible to other ESXi hosts as well. Unless, I'm missing something easy here :smileyplain: However, this may not be recommended as it may have performance implications.

https://www.avoiderrors.com/install-freenas-hypervisor-esxi/​

https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2017/05/configure-freenas-9-10-nfs-vmware-esxi-6-datastore/

Cheers,

Supreet

[daphnissov · Accepted solution]

You can do it, as SupreetK​ mentioned, however this is, in virtually all cases, an extremely horrible idea that you should never do unless testing something temporarily or in an experimental environment.

[continuum]

> A consultant says it should be possible
It is indeed possible but a good consultant should have told you to forget the idea immediatly.

[MariusRoma]

> A consultant says it should be possible

> It is indeed possible but a good consultant should have told you to forget the idea immediatly.

Do you mean it is possible to publish the datastore itself as an NFS share?

Regards

marius

[daphnissov]

No, it is not possible to do so directly.