How To: Set Up an NFS Share In Proxmox

If you have the resources, the best way to set up an NFS share is to use a separate VM with a dedicated OS like TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault.

However, if you want something light and simple, and you don’t have a lot of attached network storage, you can use the Proxmox host itself for providing the NFS share.

The process is quite simple and works well if all you have is a single node and a bunch of HDDs or SSDs attached to it.

Install the NFS server package on the Proxmox host

apt install nfs-kernel-server

Then edit the file /etc/exports and add a line at the end for the nfs share, specifying the directory you want to share. For instance, let’s say we have a folder /mnt/nfs-share on the Proxmox host that we would like to share. We would then add the following line at the end:

/mnt/nfs-share 192.168.178.0/24(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

The IP range above means that this entire range has access to the folder.

• rw: gives read and write permissions
• sync: ensures the NFS server synchronizes file changes and responds to modifications
• no_subtree_check: skip checking for subtree in folders which improves reliability and performance

We also need to make sure that the /mnt/nfs-share directory has 777 as permissions

chmod 777 /mnt/nfs-share

Then at the client VM or LXC execute the command

mount -t nfs PROXMOX_HOST:/mnt/nfs-share /mnt/NEW_LOCATION_AT_CLIENT

You can also use something like 9pfs and virtioFS to directly populate the host folder into a VM but that is a bit tricky.