Connect to Windows 2008 R2 NFS Datastore from ESXi 4.1

July 4, 2012

Background I had been successfully backing up to a NFS Datastore on my backup server running XP for the past year. Hardware issues began to crop up on the server (which was a hodgepodge of parts, most of which were at least seven years old) which necessitated a rebuild. A new motherboard, CPU and 8GB […]

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ESXi Windows NFS datastore inactive upon reboot

September 6, 2010

The problem The NFS datastore I recently created to hold the virtual machine backups from my home ESXi server showed as “inactive” upon a recent server reboot. This was unexpected but, after some Googling, definitely not unusual. A second reboot (why not?) still did not restore the connection. I needed to find a proper solution […]

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Compressing Windows NFS share to simulate ESXi thin provisioning

September 5, 2010
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The problem In an effort to automate backups of some of my VMWare ESXi virtual machines, I configured a Windows Services for Unix (WSFU) share as a datastore, and set up GhettoVCB to backup the machines to the share. The problem that I discovered with this approach is that WSFU does not retain the “thin” […]

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Using ghettoVCB.sh to backup ESXi 4.1 VMs to NFS Datastore

August 27, 2010
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Introduction I recently created an NFS datastore on ESXi, linked to a Windows Services for Unix (WSFU) share on my backup, Windows XP machine. The purpose of the datastore was to store virtual machine backups. The next step in the process is to configure ghettoVCB to perform the VM backups. ghettoVCB Details of ghettoVCB can […]

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Setting up an NFS share to receive ESXi 4.1 VM Backups

August 22, 2010
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Introduction All the datastores on my ESXi box are local currently. In order for me to effectively back up virtual machines, an external datastore was needed. I chose to use Network File System (NFS). None of my virtual machines are mission critical but I do have several that would require some effort to reinstall and […]

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