Proxmox shared storage NFS is the easy way to get live migration working between cluster nodes. Add the share, set the cache and locking options right, and you’re done. Here’s the walkthrough with the settings that actually matter.
Add the NFS share
Datacenter → Storage → Add → NFS. Fill in the server IP or hostname, the export path, and a name for the storage. The content type should be Disk image if you’re storing VM disks on it. That’s the whole add step — the defaults are fine for most homelabs.
The options that actually matter
Two settings trip people up: cache mode and locking. For NFS shared storage, set cache mode to none. That tells QEMU to bypass the host page cache and write directly to the NFS server. It’s slower for a single VM, but it’s the only safe choice when multiple hosts can access the same disk image. If you leave it on the default writeback, a live migration can lose writes because the cache isn’t flushed to the NFS server before the VM moves.
Locking should be enabled. Proxmox uses file locks on the NFS share to prevent two nodes from starting the same VM at the same time. Without locking, you can corrupt a disk image if a VM gets started on two nodes by accident. It’s on by default for NFS, but check it anyway — some older guides tell you to disable it, and that’s just wrong.
When NFS is the right choice
NFS is the simplest shared storage for a Proxmox cluster. It works over plain Ethernet, no special hardware, no extra packages. If you have a NAS that exports NFS, you’re already done. Compared to iSCSI, NFS is easier to set up and easier to back up — you can just copy the files off the NFS server. iSCSI gives you block-level access and can be faster for databases, but it’s more moving parts. Ceph is the real scale-out answer, but it needs at least three nodes and a lot of RAM. For a two-node homelab cluster, NFS is the sweet spot.
One thing NFS won’t give you: snapshots. The snapshot feature in Proxmox needs a storage type that supports it, like ZFS or LVM-thin. If you rely on snapshots, check out Lost Snapshot Ability After a Storage Replacement? Check the Storage Type — that’s the same gotcha in reverse.
If you’d rather pay for this
TrueNAS sells appliances that do NFS out of the box, starting around $1,000 for a small unit. If you don’t want to manage a Linux NFS server, that’s a fair price for a supported box. But if you already have a NAS or a spare machine, NFS on Proxmox is free and takes ten minutes. I’d only pay if you need the hardware warranty.
