VMware vSphere

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  • 1.  Using a VM as a NFS server -- sometimes ok, sometimes crappy

    Posted Feb 25, 2014 05:59 PM

    I have a handful of Linux NFS servers running on Virtual Machines. Sometimes NFS performance will take an absolute nosedive and it will take about 15x longer than normal to copy files to the NFS file system. This is not a simple resource issue. If I forgo NFS and copy the file using scp of ftp, it is nice and fast. Nor does this seem to be an NFS tuning issue on Linux -- all the NFS metrics look fine. Same for the physical servers that are the NFS clients -- if I mount up an NFS file system from another NFS Server VM, I can write to that with good performance.

    So the problem seems to be centered on the NFS Server VM, and I suspect it is at the VMware layer rather than the OS layer.  Until recently we were able to resolve the problem by doing a vMotion to another hosts and then back again, or we'd put the NIC in promiscuous mode using ifconfig in Linux on the guest OS. Strange, huh?  Anyway, these two tricks are currently not working, and I have some VMs that are acting as nice and speedy NFS servers, and a few others that are dogs, and the dogs are sometimes running on the same ESXi hosts as the speedy servers.  

    I don't suppose anyone else out there is using a Linux VM as an NFS server...?  Any suggestions?



  • 2.  RE: Using a VM as a NFS server -- sometimes ok, sometimes crappy

    Posted Mar 11, 2014 06:43 PM

    I guess not.



  • 3.  RE: Using a VM as a NFS server -- sometimes ok, sometimes crappy

    Posted Sep 16, 2014 01:09 PM

    Hi, i wan't to install an nfs server on a vm. Have esxi 5.5. Can u share how u did it?



  • 4.  RE: Using a VM as a NFS server -- sometimes ok, sometimes crappy

    Posted Sep 16, 2014 01:19 PM

    That is not a VMware question, but an OS question.  Are you running Linux on your VM?  If so, it is likely that the NFS packages are already installed, and you just have to configure NFS server and start the services.



  • 5.  RE: Using a VM as a NFS server -- sometimes ok, sometimes crappy

    Posted Sep 16, 2014 01:33 PM

    Hey,

    maybe you got no answer because your inital post lacks important info, like

    vSphere version

    Guest OS

    used virtual Network adapter

    also measuring performance in slow and fast is relative :smileywink:



  • 6.  RE: Using a VM as a NFS server -- sometimes ok, sometimes crappy

    Posted Sep 16, 2014 01:40 PM

    I wanted to keep the question as general as possible, so as to not exclude possible responses from people who have different environments.  Just knowing whether or not anyone else is using a Linux VM as an NFS server would useful to me. 



  • 7.  RE: Using a VM as a NFS server -- sometimes ok, sometimes crappy

    Posted Sep 16, 2014 02:02 PM

    I use FreeNAS in a few lab/test environments. I nor any of our dev's have ever noticed an issue, I sometimes use an NFS share as a datastore as well.



  • 8.  RE: Using a VM as a NFS server -- sometimes ok, sometimes crappy

    Posted Sep 17, 2014 04:15 PM

    Ok ..i now have an ubuntu 10.04 in a vm with nfs server running.