Unable to access the files on NFS shares after a successful mount

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware Cloud on AWS
• VMware Cloud on Dell EMC

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• After mounting a NFS share on the host, accessing the directory will fail with error 

"-sh: cd: can't cd to /vmfs/volumes/nfsds1: Not a directory" 

• Creating files or deploying a VM on the exported  share from vCenter UI will fail with error 

"Failed to deploy OVF package. Cause: The object or item referred to could not be found. Directory {filename} not created since file by same name already exists The operation failed due to Unable to access file"

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Cause

Some NFS servers may allow a file to be mounted as a share. If users mount such shares, further operations on the mounted share like 'cd' will fail.

Resolution

To avoid this scenario, it is recommended to mount the share as a directory rather than as a file share.