Ever wanted to deploy an NFS file server which consumes little to no local disk? For example: sick of managing on-premise storage for file server resources that could efficiently be stored in object storage?

You can. you can keep your active data and long term archive in the same location, an object store. As users access their data, their data is cached locally to the file server, as data is no longer in active use, the data will expire the LucidLink cache and still be available, on-demand, from the same mount-point. No more moving data between active locations, to second tier storage.

To keep this configuration simple, as a general guide, we will install and configure a basic environment, in this example to simplify permissioning, etc. we will use Root. Assuming there isn't an existing NFS deployment. Please adapt as required for your environment, Linux standards and best practices.

1. Install NFS and basic dependencies and ensure it is configured to run at system start

sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap
systemctl enable nfs-kernel-server

2. Identify and download LucidLink client by copying the link from https://lucidlink.com/download 

wget https://www.lucidlink.com/download/latest/lin64/stable/ -O lucidinstaller.deb

3. Install LucidLink client

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install ./lucidinstaller.deb -y

4. Create a link to your Filespace (see Getting Started Guide)

5. Once your Filespace has been created, is successfully initialized please proceed with launching our daemon, and linking your Filespace as Root - update details such as Filespace, user, password and preferred mount-point in our example we will mount in /srv/Lucid

sudo su
lucid daemon --fs <filespace.domain> --user <fsuser> --password <fspwd> --mount-point /srv/Lucid &

Note: you can run LucidLink as a systemd service to survive system reboots

6. Configure your NFS export, replace <host/network> with your host, network or wildcard - example(s):  host 192.168.1.1 or network 192.168.1.1/24

edit: /etc/exports
add: /srv/Lucid <host/network>(rw,no_root_squash,sync,fsid=0)

note: "fsid=0" is required for FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) NFS export

7. Restart NFS service

service nfs-kernel-server restart

8. Confirm your NFS export and service successfully restarted

exportfs

Connect to your NFS server backed by a LucidLink mount-point and infinite S3 compatible object storage. Enjoy!