So, yesterday evening y0sh came to me with following problem: “I got an real nice proxmox server with loads of CPU and RAM - and nearly no storage left. And I got an small little Atom Server with loads of Storage - but not very useful as VM Host - and yes, they are within the same network”. Ok, so: Lets create an NFSv3 Server on the Atom system and mount it as disk storage within Proxmox 🙂

Atom Server (Ubuntu)

Install NFS v3 Server

sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server rpcbind

Create Shared Directories

sudo mkdir -p /var/nfsshare  
sudo chmod -R 777 /var/nfsshare

Configure Server

sudo vi /etc/exports

Insert the line into exports, with the IP Address of your NFS Client / Proxmox Server

/var/nfsshare 192.168.1.111(rw,sync,no_root_squash)

save and exit, fine tuning:

sudo vi /etc/default/nfs-kernel-server

change the line RPCMOUNTDOPTS to

RPCMOUNTDOPTS="--manage-gids --no-nfs-version 4"  
# to use nfs v3 ...

reload the nfs exports…

sudo exportfs -r

…or restart the server

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

sudo exportfs -v

Mount NFS in Proxmox

Go to Datacenter, Storage, Add, NFS

IP: <IPofYourNFSUbuntuServer>
Export: Export i.e. /var/nfsshare
Content: i.e. Disk image 
Enable: Yes 
Max Backups: Maximum Backups of each VM 
# if something goes wrong and you still can't connect to the NFS, log onto the Proxmox server 
# vi /etc/pve/storage.cfg 
# look for your NFS Mount and change options to options vers=3,nolock 
# save the file and it should work