I have seen many of the unanswered questions about esxi mysteriously not mounting NFS shares. This one provides perhaps a chance to track down what is going on.
The situation: I have built a new esxi 6.7.0 host to move some VMs to while we upgrade the hardware on a host currently running esxi 6.0.0
The plan was simple, and I've done this numerous times before (with earlier versions of esxi) -- use a manual ghettoVCB run to capture the VMs to the long-running NFS server then use cp and vmkfstools to move them on to the new box (running esxi 6.7.0). (ghettoVmotion....)
But the esxi 6.7.0 throws the maddeningly vague error
2019-03-07T03:44:12.632Z cpu7:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)NFS: 171: NFS mount 192.168.42.3:/somepool/esxi_backupstore0 failed: Unable to connect to NFS server.
This NFS server is v3, FreeBSD 11.2 p0. It is used every week by ghettoVCB to make copies of the VMs. It also used to host the linux home dirs for the machines on the LAN ('til we virtualized that to a FreeBSD VM on the esxi host).
So, off I go and find all the variants of this problem (mostly unsolved). Salient points -- no firewall on any of the 3 hosts, I can vmkping the NFS server, and netcat to it. I can mount an NFS store on a different FreeBSD server (running 9.1 p0) from the esxi 6.7.0 box, across the internet via a VPN tunnel. I can mount the FreeBSD 11.2 NFS store from linux boxes, (and obviously from the esxi 6.0.0 box). NFS is all v3. The exports on both NFS machines are virtually identical (no pun intended).
so, here are the vmkernel log excerpts showing the failing mount and the successful mounts. If anybody knows how to make these appear as code blocks, please let me know.
esxi 6.7.0 failure on 192.168.42.3
2019-03-07T03:43:40.836Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)World: 11942: VC opID b1067550 maps to vmkernel opID 7457c6f4
2019-03-07T03:43:40.836Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)NFS: 160: Command: (mount) Server: (192.168.42.3) IP: (192.168.42.3) Path: (/somepool/esxi_backupstore0) Label: (backupstore0) Options: (None)
2019-03-07T03:43:40.836Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)StorageApdHandler: 977: APD Handle be94838e-79e611ed Created with lock[StorageApd-0x430e2a0d6700]
2019-03-07T03:43:40.836Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)CpuSched: 693: user latency of 2099586 RPC-tx-192.168.42.3.0.111 0 changed by 2098551 hostd-worker -6
2019-03-07T03:43:40.837Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)SunRPC: 1099: Destroying world 0x200982
2019-03-07T03:43:40.837Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)CpuSched: 693: user latency of 2099587 RPC-tx-192.168.42.3.3.245 0 changed by 2098551 hostd-worker -6
2019-03-07T03:43:51.633Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)SunRPC: 3303: Synchronous RPC abort for client 0x4304551ec120 IP 192.168.42.3.3.245 proc 1 xid 0x2907a083 attempt 1 of 3
2019-03-07T03:44:01.633Z cpu2:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)SunRPC: 3303: Synchronous RPC abort for client 0x4304551ec120 IP 192.168.42.3.3.245 proc 1 xid 0x2907a084 attempt 2 of 3
2019-03-07T03:44:12.632Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)SunRPC: 3303: Synchronous RPC abort for client 0x4304551ec120 IP 192.168.42.3.3.245 proc 1 xid 0x2907a085 attempt 3 of 3
2019-03-07T03:44:12.632Z cpu0:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)SunRPC: 1099: Destroying world 0x200983
2019-03-07T03:44:12.632Z cpu7:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)StorageApdHandler: 1063: Freeing APD handle 0x430e2a0d6700 [be94838e-79e611ed]
2019-03-07T03:44:12.632Z cpu7:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)StorageApdHandler: 1147: APD Handle freed!
2019-03-07T03:44:12.632Z cpu7:2098551 opID=7457c6f4)NFS: 171: NFS mount 192.168.42.3:/somepool/esxi_backupstore0 failed: Unable to connect to NFS server.
esxi 6.7.0 success on 192.168.254.3
2019-03-07T04:11:56.012Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)World: 11942: VC opID b1067619 maps to vmkernel opID 2a84b29f
2019-03-07T04:11:56.012Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)NFS: 160: Command: (mount) Server: (192.168.254.3) IP: (192.168.254.3) Path: (/otherpool/esxi_backupstore0) Label: (backupstore0) Options: (None)
2019-03-07T04:11:56.012Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)StorageApdHandler: 977: APD Handle c02083a6-ef60d04d Created with lock[StorageApd-0x430e2a0d6700]
2019-03-07T04:11:56.012Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)CpuSched: 693: user latency of 2099848 RPC-tx-192.168.254.3.0.111 0 changed by 2098619 hostd-worker -6
2019-03-07T04:11:56.059Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)SunRPC: 1099: Destroying world 0x200a88
2019-03-07T04:11:56.059Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)CpuSched: 693: user latency of 2099849 RPC-tx-192.168.254.3.2.216 0 changed by 2098619 hostd-worker -6
2019-03-07T04:11:56.101Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)SunRPC: 1099: Destroying world 0x200a89
2019-03-07T04:11:56.101Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)CpuSched: 693: user latency of 2099850 RPC-tx-192.168.254.3.0.111 0 changed by 2098619 hostd-worker -6
2019-03-07T04:11:56.144Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)SunRPC: 1099: Destroying world 0x200a8a
2019-03-07T04:11:56.144Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)CpuSched: 693: user latency of 2099851 RPC-tx-192.168.254.3.8.1 0 changed by 2098619 hostd-worker -6
2019-03-07T04:11:56.212Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)NFS: 346: Restored connection to the server 192.168.254.3 mount point /otherpool/esxi_backupstore0, mounted as c02083a6-ef60d04d-0000-000000000000 ("backupstore0")
2019-03-07T04:11:56.212Z cpu2:2098619 opID=2a84b29f)NFS: 221: NFS mount 192.168.254.3:/otherpool/esxi_backupstore0 status: Success
seen and tried the suggestions in these
VMware Knowledge BaseTroubleshooting connectivity issues to an NFS datastore on ESX and ESXi hosts (1003967)
NFS mount failed: Unable to connect to NFS server.
Strange Issue : NFS datastore can't be mounted only to several ESXi hosts