I’m posting this as a answer for a question asked by Sysprobs reader. How to configure and setting up NFS share on Windows 7 and connect it to VMware ESX server as storage. Network File System (NFS) developed by Sun Microsystems to use in UNIX based systems.
To setup NFS share on earlier Microsoft Operating systems, you need a component called ‘Windows Services for UNIX (WSFU)’ which can be downloaded from Microsoft. But WSFU is not for Windows 7. So, creating NFS share on Windows 7 and allowing other UNIX based Operating Systems to access the share is not straight forward without third party utilities.
haneWIN NFS Server works nicely with Windows 7 to create and share Network File Systems. Download 30 days trial version of hanWIN NFS here. if you are happy with the product and for permanent use, get the registered version.
Steps to Configure NFS Share on Windows 7
1) Download and Install haneWIN product.
2) I suggest to switch off Windows firewall in Windows 7 client.
3) Right Click and Run as administrator to open it.
4) Go to Server tab and make sure below both check boxes are ticked.
5) Go to Exports tab, here we can define which drive or folder will be shared. The best part is, it doesn’t require any Windows permissions to set up. I’m going to share a folder created for ESXi storage under below location.
Click on ‘Edit exports file’ button, remove the example shares and add your share location. I have added following line in opened text file.
-public to enable web based NFS share access. More details available under help.
Note - You can’t save this file if you started program without selecting run as administrator option.
See Also
Configure iSCSI disks on Windows computer with VMware
How to connect FreeNAS iSCSI disks to VMware ESX Server
6) Press Restart Server to take effect of changes in export file.
7) That’s it. Now you setup windows 7 as NFS server with share, which can be accessed by UNIX based Operating systems and programs.
To view connected clients and mount points, go to Mounts tab. I managed to connect this share from VMware ESXi server. Here is the client details.
I will be showing how to connect haneWin NFS share on Windows 7 to VMware ESXi server storage very soon.
Stay tuned.
Just registered to say one thing . . . .OMG thank you so much for this simple tutorial.
How do I mount the directory to Ubutnu
It worked great until this morning. Then it stopped working and now I can’t see my mounts anymore. It is not mounting my exports. What to do from here?