vSphere 6 now supports NFS v4.1 with Authentication

VMware finally supports NFS version 4.1 and even allows Kerberos authentication.  This now allows administrators to use features that were brought to the NFS kernel back in 2010.  The biggest advantage in my mind is the ability to have “Multi-pathing” on your shares.  You can now have multiple IP addresses associated with a single NFS mount for redundancy.  In addition you can now provide more authentication for the mounts other then IP Addressing.  You can now use Kerberos to authenticate the ESXi hosts.  Now you must be using AD and that the ESXi host must joined to the domain, and that you’ve specified the NFS Authentication Credentials (which are in System -> Authentication Credentials on each host).

Its pretty easy to create a NFS v4.1 mount.  Like anything else in the past year or so, you must be using the Web Client to use this new feature.

nfs-version

Once you reach this screen, you can name the mount, and specify the folder and servers that this Datastore lives on.  After clicking the green +, you can then add another folder and server to be associated with the same Datastore.

name-config

The last important screen is the check box where you enabled Kerberos for this Datastore.  It is pretty simple and self-explanatory.

kerberos

At this point the Datastore acts exactly the same as they have before, however if one of the IP Addresses that host your NFS Datastore goes away, it should failover to the 2nd one (if you provided it).

 

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