guide: using NFS as a remote storage

[efiop]

I.e. mount it to some dir and specify it as a local dir repository for dvc.

Related to #4303

[dashohoxha]

I have generalized this as "Mounted DVC Storage", which includes not only NFS, but also SSHFS, Samba, or any other data storage that can be network-mounted on a local directory.

I have also built an interactive example that explains how to do it for SSHFS (since this is easier to set up for an interactive example): https://katacoda.com/dvc/courses/examples/mounted-storage

[jorgeorpinel]

@efiop did you mean in https://dvc.org/doc/command-reference/remote/add though? Or somewhere else.

[efiop]

@jorgeorpinel I guess a note there would also be pretty nice as a way of using any storage that you can mount to your local fs.

[iesahin]

I read the comments in #784. Is there anything that should be done here?

[shcheklein]

It feels that we don't have a perfect place at the moment to put this note. I think there should be something about remotes in the User Guide in the first place. Starting from basic concepts, expanding into a proper section, where we can put a note in the introductory part about "Unsupported directly remotes" with a solutions like sshfs, mounted NFS, etc. For now, we can probably create a section and a note in the existing remote add, remote modify, remote index with the same meaning.

[jorgeorpinel]

there should be something about remotes in the User Guide in the first place

Added this to #2866.

[jorgeorpinel]

QQ @dberenbaum: This has a low priority now but #4303 (part of this one) a high priority. 🤔 Does that mean you want to focus on the latter without addressing the former (this one) ?

[dberenbaum]

@jorgeorpinel In https://dvc.org/doc/user-guide/data-management/remote-storage#file-systems-local-remotes, you added:

You can also use system directories, mounted drives, network resources e.g. network-attached storage (NAS), and other external devices as storage.

Is that enough to close this one? Do we need anything else for this issue specifically?

[jorgeorpinel]

Maybe just add "mounted drives (e.g. NFS)" (link to https://nfs.sourceforge.net/ ?) unless the intention here was specifically about NFS for some reason, and not in general any mounted drives. Note that there are NFS-specific notes in the config options state.dir and index.dir.