The NFS role service and feature set gives IT administrators the ability to integrate a Windows Server–based environment with Unix- based operating systems. Most corporate environments today consist of a mixed operating system infrastructure to some extent. Using a Windows NFS file server, you can configure file shares for use by multiple operating systems throughout the environment.

Windows Server 2022 takes those capabilities even further by enabling you to integrate with platforms such as ESXi. ESXi is vMware’s exclusive operating system–independent hypervisor. ESXi is referred to as a bare- metal operating system because once it is installed on server virtualization hardware, guest virtual machines can be installed without requiring the use of any other underlying operating system. With Windows Server 2022, you can use an NFS share efficiently as an ESXi data store to house all of your guest virtual machines.

Let’s take a look at configuring an NFS data store in Exercise 11.10.

For this exercise, you will need the following:

■             A Windows Server 2022 server

■             A vMware ESXi 6.7 server

EXERCISE 11.10

Configuring the NFS Data Store

1. Open Server Manager on your Windows Server 2022 machine.
2. Launch the Add Roles And Features Wizard from the dashboard.
3. Install the Server For NFS role on the server. A reboot is not required.
4. Create a new folder on your server named NFS_Datastore, right- click and select  Properties, and then navigate to the NFS Sharing tab.
5. Click the Manage NFS Sharing button to open the NFS Advanced Sharing page and then select Share This Folder. Notice how enabling the share also enables the share’s default settings. The share settings let you configure share authentication and user access further if the need arises. The default settings will work just fine for this exercise.
6. Click the Permissions tab to open the NFS Share Permissions page. This is where you will configure the type of access that will be allowed by machines accessing this NFS data store. By default, the NFS share permissions are set to Read- Only and do not include root access. For this exercise, you will need to change the type of access to Read- Write and select the option to allow root access.
7. Click OK to close the NFS Share Permissions page and then click Apply and OK on the NFS Advanced Sharing page. Your new NFS share is now built, ready to be presented as an NFS data store to a vMware ESXi host. Be sure to record the network path displayed on the NFS Sharing tab of the share’s Properties page. You will need that information to perform a proper mount on the ESXi host.
8. Switch to your ESXi host and launch the Add Storage Wizard from the Configuration tab.
9. On the Select Storage Type page of the wizard, select the Network File System storage type; click Next to continue to the Locate Network File System page.
10. On this page of the wizard, you will fill in the server and folder information for the NFS share that you will be using as a vSphere data store. Using the information recorded from step 7, properly fill out the server and folder fields and then name your new data store.
11. Click Next to continue to the Ready To Complete page of the wizard. Review the information and click Finish. Once the Create NAS data store task completes on the ESXi host, you are ready to use your Windows Server 2022 shared folder as a vSphere ESXi data store.

The previous exercise shows how versatile Windows Server 2022 shares can be. The same principles can be applied to making Windows Server shares available to other Unix- based operating systems such as ESXi.

I will show you how to use Windows PowerShell for configuring NFS shares in the section “Windows PowerShell.” If you would like to see a more complete list of NFS PowerShell commands, please visit Microsoft’s website at https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ jj603081(v=wps.630).aspx.

Configuring Disk Quotas

In this chapter so far, you have seen how to set up a share and publish it to Active Directory. You’ve also learned how to set up permissions and security and how NTFS and shared permissions work with each other. It’s time to learn how to limit users’ hard drive space on the servers.

Configuring Disk Quotas

Disk quotas give administrators the ability to limit how much storage space a user can have on a hard drive. Disk quotas are an advantage of using NTFS over FAT32. If you decide to use FAT32 on a volume or partition, quotas will not be available.

You have a few options available to you when you set up disk quotas. You can set up disk quotas based on volume or on users:

A good rule of thumb is to set up an umbrella quota policy that covers the entire volume and then let individual users exceed the umbrella as needed.

Setting Quotas by Volume One way to set up disk quotas is by setting the quota by volume, on a per- volume basis. This means that if you have a hard drive with C:, D:, and E: volumes, you would have to set up three individual quotas— one for each volume. This is your umbrella. This is where you set up an entire disk quota based on the volume for all users.

Setting Quotas by User You have the ability to set up quotas on volumes by user. Here is where you would individually let users have independent quotas that exceed your umbrella quota.

Specifying Quota Entries You use quota entries to configure the volume and user quotas. You do this on the Quotas tab of the volume’s Properties dialog box. (See Exercise 11.10.)

Creating Quota Templates Quota templates are predefined ways to set up quotas. Templates allow you to set up disk quotas without needing to create a disk quota from scratch. One advantage of using a template is that when you want to set up disk quotas on multiple volumes (C:, D:, and E:) on the same hard drive, you do not need to re-c reate the quota on each volume.

Exercise 11.11 will show you how to set up an umbrella quota for all users and then have an individual account in your Active Directory exceed this quota.