Azure NetApp Files

Part A walks through the real commands with simulated output. Part B is a hands-on NFS lab on your laptop that behaves like an ANF volume.

1Part A: account, pool and delegated subnet (simulated)

Don’t run these on a free account; the pool bills from creation. This is the order and the kind of output you’d see:

az netappfiles account create --resource-group rg-saat-anf --name anf-saat --location centralindia
az netappfiles pool create --resource-group rg-saat-anf --account-name anf-saat --name pool-std --location centralindia --size 1 --service-level Standard
az network vnet subnet create --resource-group rg-saat-anf --vnet-name vnet-app --name snet-anf --address-prefixes 10.20.2.0/28 --delegations Microsoft.NetApp/volumes

2Part A: a volume with an export policy (simulated)

The volume allows only the app subnet, read-write, with root access on:

az netappfiles volume create --resource-group rg-saat-anf --account-name anf-saat --pool-name pool-std --name vol1 --location centralindia --service-level Standard --usage-threshold 1024 --file-path vol1 --vnet vnet-app --subnet snet-anf --protocol-types NFSv4.1 --allowed-clients 10.20.1.0/24 --rule-index 1 --unix-read-write true --has-root-access true --network-features Standard
az netappfiles volume show --resource-group rg-saat-anf --account-name anf-saat --pool-name pool-std --name vol1 --query "{ip:mountTargets[0].ipAddress, path:creationToken, quotaBytes:usageThreshold, mibps:actualThroughputMibps}"

Simulated output:

{
  "ip": "10.20.2.4",
  "path": "vol1",
  "quotaBytes": 1099511627776,
  "mibps": 16.0
}

Note the units: the CLI takes the quota in GiB but shows usageThreshold in bytes. 1 TiB on Standard gives 16 MiB/s. On a VM in 10.20.1.0/24, you’d mount it like this:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/vol1
sudo mount -t nfs -o rw,hard,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,vers=4.1,tcp 10.20.2.4:/vol1 /mnt/vol1

3Part B: build an ANF-style volume on your laptop

In an Ubuntu 24.04 VirtualBox VM, install the NFS server and create a volume folder that looks like a new ANF volume (owned by root, mode 0770):

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y nfs-kernel-server nfs-common
sudo mkdir -p /srv/anf/vol1 /mnt/vol1
sudo chmod 0770 /srv/anf/vol1
echo '/srv/anf/vol1 127.0.0.1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash)' | sudo tee /etc/exports
sudo exportfs -ra
sudo exportfs -v

You should see something like this:

/srv/anf/vol1   127.0.0.1(sync,wdelay,hide,no_subtree_check,sec=sys,rw,secure,no_root_squash,no_all_squash)

That line is your export policy: allowed client 127.0.0.1, read-write, root access on (no_root_squash). It maps one to one to an ANF export policy rule.

4Mount it and write a file

Mount with the same options as ANF recommends, then write as root:

sudo mount -t nfs -o rw,hard,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,vers=4.1,tcp 127.0.0.1:/srv/anf/vol1 /mnt/vol1
sudo touch /mnt/vol1/hello.txt
ls -l /mnt/vol1
findmnt /mnt/vol1 -o TARGET,SOURCE,FSTYPE

You should see something like this:

total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 21 10:20 hello.txt
TARGET    SOURCE                    FSTYPE
/mnt/vol1 127.0.0.1:/srv/anf/vol1   nfs4

The client mounted over NFSv4.1 and root could write, because root access is on.

✅ Checkpoint: Your laptop serves an NFS volume with an export policy, and the client mounts it with NFSv4.1 and writes as root.