topic Re: Root Access to ESX Host in VMware Solutions Discussions

Root Access to ESX Host

TAQADUS_REHMAN — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:52:46 GMT

Hi,

I am New to NetApp.

I have assigned a NFS datastore to ESX host. What I have experienced is that without root access I am unable to create VM or file on datastore even Read/Write is enabled.

My question is why we need Root access while we allowed Read/Write access to host?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Taqadus Rehman.

Re: Root Access to ESX Host

yannb — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 01:53:24 GMT

That is related to the way NFS maps and authenticate users.

VMware does not know how to use something else than UID 9 (root) to mount and access a datastore, and usually that wouldn't make any sense to do otherwise anyway since datastore are dedicated most of the time.

So, VMware mounts the volume with UID 0, and there is a special security parameter in most NFS servers that determines if UID 0 is to be mapped to another user or if it is allowed to do writes. In that case, you just need to say that, yes, I want root to be able to use the export from the given IP addresses (which are all your VMkernel NFS IPs)

Re: Root Access to ESX Host

TAQADUS_REHMAN — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:25:34 GMT

Thank you for your reply.

Please correct me if I am wrong. As per your reply what I understood is that UID 0 is only used for mapping but not for read/write? and this is NetApp's behavior not VMware's as NFS server is NetApp's facility?