Here are the relevant parts of my ganesha.conf related to the two EXPORTs with same Path. This is the state before, when booting guests was consistently failing. NFS_CORE_PARAM { mount_path_pseudo = true; } EXPORT { Export_Id = 10101; Path = /pool/vm-images; Pseudo = /export/ss1/vm-images; #Tag = ss1; SecType = sys; Access_Type = none; Squash = All_Squash; FSAL { Name = PROXY_V3; Srv_Addr=10.168.168.1; } CLIENT { Clients = @vh; Access_Type = RW; Squash = No_Root_Squash; } } EXPORT { Export_Id = 10102; Path = /pool/vm-images; Pseudo = /export/ss2/vm-images; #Tag = ss2; SecType = sys; Access_Type = none; Squash = All_Squash; FSAL { Name = PROXY_V3; Srv_Addr=10.168.168.2; } CLIENT { Clients = @vh; Access_Type = RW; Squash = No_Root_Squash; } } This is the the state after I changed the second EXPORT Path to differ from the first. NFS_CORE_PARAM { mount_path_pseudo = true; } EXPORT { Export_Id = 10101; Path = /pool/vm-images; Pseudo = /export/ss1/vm-images; #Tag = ss1; SecType = sys; Access_Type = none; Squash = All_Squash; FSAL { Name = PROXY_V3; Srv_Addr=10.168.168.1; } CLIENT { Clients = @vh; Access_Type = RW; Squash = No_Root_Squash; } } EXPORT { Export_Id = 10102; Path = /pool/vm-images2; Pseudo = /export/ss2/vm-images; #Tag = ss2; SecType = sys; Access_Type = none; Squash = All_Squash; FSAL { Name = PROXY_V3; Srv_Addr=10.168.168.2; } CLIENT { Clients = @vh; Access_Type = RW; Squash = No_Root_Squash; } }