Adding an NFS share on Synology Incorporated NAS DS1010+ fails with the error: Unable to complete Sysinfo operation

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot add an NFS datastore to an ESX/ESXi host from a Synology Incorporated NAS DS1010+ array
• You see the error:
  
  Unable to complete Sysinfo operation. Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
  
  
• The ESXi /var/log/messages log contains warnings similar to:

...cpu10:5394)NFS: 149: Command: (mount) Server: (172.16.11.200) IP: (172.16.11.200) Path: (/XXXXXXX/YYYYYYYY) Label: (
...cpu18:4114)WARNING: NFS: 213: Got error 13 from mount call
...cpu7:5394)WARNING: NFS: 959: MOUNT failed with MOUNT status 13 (Permission denied) trying to mount Server (172.16.11
...cpu7:5394)NFS: 171: NFS mount XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:/XXXXXXX/YYYYYYYY status: The mount request was denied by the NFS server

Environment

VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded

Cause

This error is returned by the ESX when the Synology NAS array either denies or is not presenting shared volumes.

Resolution

This issue is specific to Synology NAS DS1010+ arrays,which can use a wildcard configuration string to identify its targets (for example, 172.16.*.*).

To resolve this issue, configure the NAS server to access each ESX IP/VMkernel of ESX/ESXi separately with fully defined IPs (for example, 172.16.10.4). IP addresses with wildcards do not work.

See the NAS vendor documentation for information on configuring this array model with ESX.

Additional Information

Adding an NFS datastore to an ESX/ESXi host fails with the error: unable to complete sysinfo operation

Impact/Risks: