How To Setup NFS Shared Storage In Proxmox

In the video below, we show you how to set up shared storage in Proxmox using NFS

Shared storage is extremely useful for hypervisors, especially if you have a cluster of them because it improves redundancy and makes VM migrations much quicker

We use TrueNAS as an example, although other NFS servers can be used

We show how to create a user account in TrueNAS, because Proxmox will try and connect as the root user, how to create a Dataset and then create an NFS share

Then we cover how to connect Proxmox to the NFS share

Steps Taken

1. Create a user account
   On the NFS server create a user account for Proxmox
   Proxmox will connect as root and doesn’t provide an option to change this
   But in NFS you can map the root account to an account with less rights

2. Create a Dataset Folder
   To keep data separate and more secure, on the NFS server create a folder to be shared although in the case of TrueNAS a Dataset is better

3. File Permissions
   When connecting to an NFS share, file permissions can override the access provided by NFS
   Change the file permissions and ownership if necessary to allow access for the user account we created

4. Create an NFS Share
   Share the folder out using NFS
   Because Proxmox will connect as root, remap the root account and group to the user and group we created
   Ideally the root passwords would be different anyway
   This reduces the chance of elevated access through the NFS share
   However, anybody will have access if they login in as root, so use an isolated storage network
   You can limit access to certain computers using a firewall, or if performance is of greater concern, we’ll just restrict computer access on the file server itself

5. Connect Proxmox to NFS
   Create a new NFS storage on Proxmox
   Point it to the server and NFS share
   TIP: Use the server’s IP address to avoid being locked out during a cold boot up when the DNS server is likely unavailable
   Select the content that will be stored here and limit access to certain nodes if necessary
   Change the preallocation setting if needed, although the default option to only preallocate space for Metadata is usually fine
   Change the NFS version if you like, although chances are, you can restrict this on the NFS server anyway and it will apply to all incoming NFS connections

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