Creating a Network File System share for the Assets Tool persistent volume

With the re-introduction of the Assets Tool in Management Center for HCL Commerce, the storage and persistence of bulk asset files is a consideration when using the solution.

If you are using the Assets Tool within your Docker-based deployment, it is recommended to use a Network File System (NFS) share that can then be mounted as a directory within the HCL Commerce deployment /volumes/ directory.

This implementation is recommended to ensure that your site file management is partitioned from your deployment and its file system. This will ensure that capacity, persistence, and performance considerations are separate.

The following instructions are for CentOS 7, but can be followed on other Linux distributions with similar package management and system configuration schemes.

Procedure

Set up the NFS server on the file storage host machine.

Install the nfs-utils and rpcbind application packages.
```
yum install nfs-utils rpcbind -y
```

Enable the NFS services on system boot.

systemctl enable nfs-server
systemctl enable rpcbind
systemctl enable nfs-lock
systemctl enable nfs-idmap

Start the NFS services.

systemctl start rpcbind
systemctl start nfs-server
systemctl start nfs-lock
systemctl start nfs-idmap

Check the NFS server status to ensure that it is running.
```
Systemctl status nfs
```

Create the local share directories, configure their export, and export them to make them available remotely.
1. Create the local share directories.
```
mkdir -p /nfs_shares/assets/auth
mkdir -p /nfs_shares/assets/live
```
2. Define the NFS export.
  1. Open the /etc/exports NFS configuration file for editing.
  2. Add the NFS export definition.
```
/nfs_shares/assets *(rw,no_root_squash)
```
  3. Save and close the file.
3. Export the directories in NFS.
```
exportfs -r
```
4. Restart the NFS server.
```
systemctl restart nfs-server
```
Mount the assets NFS share within your deployment environments.
1. On your deployment machine or machines, mount the remote NFS share.
```
mount localhost:/nfs_shares/assets docker_compose_directory/volumes/assets
```
  Where docker_compose_directory is the local directory where your deployment is made, and your /volumes/ directory is contained.
2. Verify the mounted file system.
```
showmount -e
```

Results

Your remote NFS file system is now mounted and able to be used within your Docker-based HCL Commerce deployment. You can now access, store, and persist assets from the Assets Tool.