Create CentOS based NFS Share for vCloud Director

Updated 2018-09-20: Not creating partitions on the /dev/sdb disk.

Original Post Published: 20 November 2014.

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It was quite a while ago i had to create a Linux based NFS share for a 2 x vCloud Director (vCD) cell setup. For some reason Windows based NFS shares have been used during my latest vCD implementations.

Below are the steps i took when creating the NFS share and mounted it on the vCD cell.

NFS Server Preparation

• Add a new 100 GB disk to the virtual machine
• create file system with label vcd-nfs
  • /sbin/mkfs.ext4 -L /vcd-nfs /dev/sdb
  • If you create want to create a disk partition do the following:
    • fdisk /dev/sdb
    • c
    • u
    • n
    • p
    • 1
    • accept default (press enter 2 times)
    • w (for writing the changes)
    • create file system on the newly created partition by running the below command:
      • /sbin/mkfs.ext4 -L /vcd-nfs /dev/sdb1
• create a mount point
  • mkdir /vcd-nfs
• mount the disk
  • mount /dev/sdb1 /vcd-nfs/
• Create a file to the mount point to make sure everything looks good
  • echo “NFS server test file” >  /vcd-nfs/nfs01-test-file
• Adding the below line to the /etc/fstab file to make sure the disk is mounted during reboot
  • LABEL=/vcd-nfs /vcd-nfs      ext4    defaults        1 2
• Verify if the NFS server required packages were installed
  • rpm -qa | grep nfs
    • output shows both nfs-utils and nfs-utils-lib were installed
  • If you need to install the NFS packages you can simply run:
    • yum install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib
• Make sure NFS and rpcbind will start automatically after reboot:
  • chkconfig –list nfs
    • output should be “nfs         0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off”
    • If not, run the command “chkconfig nfs on“
  • chkconfig –list rpcbind
    • output should be: “rpcbind         0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off”

NFS Server Setup

• Export the newly created disk by adding the following line to the /etc/exports file
  • vcd-nfs  192.168.246.0/24(rw,sync,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)
    • vcd-nfs is the NFS share
    • 192.168.246.0/24 is the network to which i want to export the share to.
    • rw is read-write
    • sync – making sure that commit is send when the changes are completed
    • no_root_squash – necessary since we will be mounting the NFS as user root from the vCD cells
• Enable the NFS export:
  • exportfs -a
•  Verify the directory has been exported:
  • showmount -e nfs01
    • output should be “/vcd-nfs 192.168.246.0/24”

NFC Client (vCD Cell) Preparation

• Verify if the NFS server required packages were installed
  • rpm -qa | grep nfs
    • output shows both nfs-utils and nfs-utils-lib were installed
• If you need to install the NFS packages you can simply run:
  • yum install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib
• Make sure rpcbind will start automatically after reboot:
  • chkconfig –list rpcbind
    • output should be “rpcbind         0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off”

NFC Client (vCD Cell) Setup

• Create a directory when you want to mount the NFS share:
  • mkdir /nfs-mount-test
• Mount the NFS share:
  • mount -t nfs 192.168.246.162:vcd-nfs /nfs-mount-test/
    • 192.168.246.162 is the NFS server
• Verify you got write access to the NFS share:
  • echo “vCD cell NFS test” > /nfs-mount-test/vcd01-file

Since i will not mount the NFS share to the nfs-mount-test directory after installing vCD i removed the configuration

• umount /nfs-mount-test
• rm -rf /nfs-mount-test

After installing vCD, the NFS share should be mounted as the new vCD transfer area for the vCD cells and the mount point is /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer