Creating NFS Share on Synology NAS

I wanted to add a few NFS shares to my VMware lab in order to access my ISO’s of my software.

From the control panel create or select a new shared folder

 Give it a proper name, description and select which volume it will reside.

Give any users you wish to access the shared folder the proper permissions.

Next, you will need to add your hosts permissions.

Provide the IP or FQDN of your host

Go to your NFS share, right click and select properties. Copy the location information.

Log onto your host directly, or select it from vCenter. Select the configuration tab, and then storage.

Select Add Storage. Select Network File System.

Provide the IP or FDQN of your Synology. Paste in the folder information. Provide the Datastore name.

 You will now see your NFS share presented to your host.

vSphere 5.x Whitebox Home Lab

About a year ago I created a home lab to help me with my VCP 5 exam. I posted my write up on techexams.net. The design was a nested environment where I ran ESXi on top of ESXi. I ran FreeNas as an VM so I could use the functions of storage vmotion. This setup worked well for me at the time, and was fairly cheap in terms of cost. The hardware I used was no more than a gaming machine with parts verified to work. The post can be found here.

Now VCP-DV is over I wanted to explore going for my VCAP and I was going to need a lab closer to a production environment.

My first step was to get a NAS. I purchased a Synology 1812+ NAS. It supports iSCSI and NFS shares. I use it for my home media and soon my hosted VMs. I’m able use link aggregation in order to get better performance. I plan on installing three SSDs in a raid set for further improvement. The other 5 bays are used for media.

I plan on building a couple of ESXi hosts out of shuttle boxes, with i5 processors, and 32GB of ram. As I build the rest of my lab I will update this post. In the meantime you can see my inspiration for this lab from Ryan Birk Here.