asked on 1/22/2009

NFS Share on Windows 2003 R2 will not display contents to ESX

OK, here's the gist. We had a working shared NFS volume that worked for esx. Unfortunately, the volume became unusable and all the VMs that we hosted on it became inaccessible. At first, it was puzzling because the admin that set it up in the first place is no longer with the company.

Not being very savvy with NFS, I noticed that the "Server for NFS" Service had stopped and would not start because legato client had highjacked the network port it once worked with. I decided to follow the first step outlined in Microsoft's Article ID: 313621 and was able to successfully get the "Server for NFS" service back up again after reinstalling & rebooting.

The above step allowed me to follow the steps outlined in this vmware presentation on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9JVwXw102E

Everything worked out great except I still can not browse the contents of the NFS share on ESX, nor can I load up my VMs. So, the question is, what am i missing here?

Any suggestions, will be fantabulously appreciated.

Prince
Tripple MCSE

VMware Microsoft Legacy OS Virtualization

Last Comment

Caxxiux

2/10/2009

MikeKane

1/22/2009

Can any host browse that NFS or is this issue limited to the 1 ESX box?

Caxxiux

1/22/2009

ASKER

Yes. All the other 3 Hosts can connect to the NFS Share but they still can't see the contents. So I guess the problem is global. Also worth noting. I tried removing the share on original esx03 that use to work, I get an error stating it is currently in use.

Caxxiux

1/22/2009

ASKER

Also, I noticed that the properties sheet on the new NFS storage is grayed out. I have tried removing and adding it but no luck.

Caxxiux

1/22/2009

ASKER

Please disregard the last comment. I could not remove it because an existing template was still referencing it. As soon as i removed the template from inventry, I was able to remove the NFS share. Bad news is I still can't browse the contents and the properties sheet is still grayed out.

MikeKane

1/22/2009

Since its on a windows box, can we check that you have the EVERYONE group granted read access via NTFS on the drive?

Caxxiux

1/22/2009

ASKER

Everyone group doesn't need to have access. Please let me explain why:

What i have learned so far is that our ESX environment that worked fine with the NFS share was on version 3.0. Since we have a second farm with hosts that was built on version 3.5, I tried mapping the same NFS share to one of the ESX 3.5 host, and was able to browse the contents.

When i tried adding the VMs to inventory, they came up as invalid. On the other hand, the old ESX 3.0 can map to the NFS share but still can not browse its contents.

This is driving me insane! Somebody HELP PLEASE!

Many thanks,
Prince

SOLUTION

MikeKane

1/22/2009