How to Mount Azure NetApp Volume on Azure Windows VM

Question

How to Mount Azure NetApp Volume on Azure, Windows VM and What are the prerequisites.

Answer 1

@Mahavir Saroj Thanks for posting your query on Microsoft Q&A.

Prerequisites:

-Ensure you have an Azure subscription with Azure NetApp Files enabled.

-Create an export policy for the NFS volume. You need at least one export policy to access the volume.

-Open specific network ports across firewalls to ensure proper functionality, shared here.

Azure NetApp Files allows up to 65,534 concurrent client ports per NFS server. These ports are used for outbound client requests. Once an NFS request is complete, the port is returned to the pool.

If NAT or a firewall sits between the NFS client and server:

• Consider static entries for the NFS server IP and port to maintain data consistency.
• Be aware that NAT can cause issues with NFS mounts hanging due to how it handles idle sessions. Configure idle sessions to remain open indefinitely if using NAT

Mounting NFSv4.1 volumes on Windows clients is not supported. For more information, see Network File System overview.

If you want to mount NFSv3 volumes on a Windows client using NFS:

1. Mount the volume onto a Unix or Linux VM first.
2. Run a chmod 777 or chmod 775 command against the volume.
3. Mount the volume via the NFS client on Windows using the mount option mtype=hard to reduce connection issues. See Windows command line utility for mounting NFS volumes for more detail. For example: Mount -o rsize=256 -o wsize=256 -o mtype=hard \\10.x.x.x\testvol X:*
4. You can also access NFS volumes from Windows clients via SMB by setting the protocol access for the volume to “dual-protocol”. This setting allows access to the volume via SMB and NFS (NFSv3 or NFSv4.1) and results in better performance than using the NFS client on Windows with an NFS volume. See Create a dual-protocol volume for details, and take note of the security style mappings table. Mounting a dual-protocol volume from Windows clients using the same procedure as regular SMB volumes.

Refer to the official documentation for detailed instructions and best practices when working with Azure NetApp Files volumes.