NFS (Network File System) was originally created by Sun, and released with the input of IBM, in the late 80's to allow for systems to mount storage systems that reside elsewhere on the network easily and efficiently. Fast-forward to NFS v4 in 2003 and we now have a universally-supported remote file-system protocol with strong security that is superior to Windows' native sharing protocol and Apple's filing protocol in every way. The goal of NFS is to allow for native-like input/output operations on a remote disk or remote disks. NFS uses Remote Procedure Calls for the client to acquire data from the server.

NFS is supported by every major operating system and, due to it's maturity as crucial communications and storage protocol, has become easy to use and well documented. NFS is also competitive in terms of performance and fully compatible as storage for VMware ESX.