There may be times when you need to present an NFS share from a Windows machine for your home vCenter server lab or for testing purposes, here is a quick step by step how to present an NFS shares to be accessible by ESX. The same instructons should work in Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as Windows Server 2012.
Present an NFS share to be used with ESXi hosts
1. Click on Server Manager then Roles > Add Roles
2. Add “File Services” role, then place checkmark beside “Services for Network File System”
3. Create a folder, C:\NFS1, right-click on folder then properties, click NFS Sharing TAB
4. Click “Manage NFS Sharing”, checkmark “Share this folder”
5. Place Checkmark beside the below Options in the screenshot
6. Click Permissios button and configure
Make sure that the ESXi host has a VMkernel port with an IP that can ping your NFS server.
To test connectivity SSH into the host with putty and run: vmkping IP_ADDRESS_OF_NFS_SERVER
From ESXi, click on Host > Configuration tab, now storage, now clik Add Storage, choose Network File System.
Server: IP_ADDRESS_OF_NFS_SERVER
Folder: /NFS1
Datastore Name: NFS1