Virtualization on FreeBSD

[Kyle]

I've recently installed FreeBSD on my home server to replace my linux
install after getting frustrated with some of the newer software.

I'll prefix this question by saying I really like FreeBSD much better so
far, except for the following.

One thing I really liked about my previous system was KVM, Linux's
kernel-supported virtualization. It always worked really well.

I've been trying VirtualBox, QEMU, and bhyve with FreeBSD as a host, but
none of them seem to work anywhere near as well as the KVM on Linux.

VirtualBox seemed to have issues with the networking.
I couldn't get KQEMU to work (it always gave me 'kqemu support: disabled'
in the kqemu console), and QEMU was too slow without it.
bhyve looks good, but it seems from what I've read that it only supports
FreeBSD and grub-bootable VMs.

Is there anyone who has had better success than me at using FreeBSD as a
host for virtualization?

Thanks

***@sdf.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org

[Nikos Vassiliadis]

Post by Kyle
I've recently installed FreeBSD on my home server to replace my linux
install after getting frustrated with some of the newer software.
I'll prefix this question by saying I really like FreeBSD much better so
far, except for the following.
One thing I really liked about my previous system was KVM, Linux's
kernel-supported virtualization. It always worked really well.
I've been trying VirtualBox, QEMU, and bhyve with FreeBSD as a host, but
none of them seem to work anywhere near as well as the KVM on Linux.

What is the problem with bhyve?

Post by Kyle
VirtualBox seemed to have issues with the networking.
disabled' in the kqemu console), and QEMU was too slow without it.
bhyve looks good, but it seems from what I've read that it only supports
FreeBSD and grub-bootable VMs.
Is there anyone who has had better success than me at using FreeBSD as a
host for virtualization?

I use bhyve in production and it's fine. According to the wiki,

Post by Kyle
Q: What VM operating systems does bhyve support?
FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE amd64/i386 and 8-STABLE amd64
FreeBSD 9.*-RELEASE amd64/i386 9-STABLE amd64/i386
FreeBSD 10 (All amd64/i386 versions)
FreeBSD 11-CURRENT amd64/i386
OpenBSD amd64/i386 5.2 and newer
Linux amd64/i386
NetBSD amd64 6.1 and newer
CentOS/RHEL 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5 and 7.0
Debian 6.0.7, 7.0, 7.6 netinstall i386/amd64
Fedora 20
OpenSUSE 12.3 and 13.1 amd64
Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04, 13.04, 14.04 and 14.10 server i386/amd64

Please share more,
Nikos

[William A. Mahaffey III]

Post by Nikos Vassiliadis

Post by Kyle
I've recently installed FreeBSD on my home server to replace my linux
install after getting frustrated with some of the newer software.
I'll prefix this question by saying I really like FreeBSD much better so
far, except for the following.
One thing I really liked about my previous system was KVM, Linux's
kernel-supported virtualization. It always worked really well.
I've been trying VirtualBox, QEMU, and bhyve with FreeBSD as a host, but
none of them seem to work anywhere near as well as the KVM on Linux.

What is the problem with bhyve?

Post by Kyle
VirtualBox seemed to have issues with the networking.
disabled' in the kqemu console), and QEMU was too slow without it.
bhyve looks good, but it seems from what I've read that it only supports
FreeBSD and grub-bootable VMs.
Is there anyone who has had better success than me at using FreeBSD as a
host for virtualization?

I use bhyve in production and it's fine. According to the wiki,

Post by Kyle
Q: What VM operating systems does bhyve support?
A: bhyve supports any version of FreeBSD i386/amd64 with VirtIO
support, plus OpenBSD, NetBSD and Linux using the
FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE amd64/i386 and 8-STABLE amd64
FreeBSD 9.*-RELEASE amd64/i386 9-STABLE amd64/i386
FreeBSD 10 (All amd64/i386 versions)
FreeBSD 11-CURRENT amd64/i386
OpenBSD amd64/i386 5.2 and newer
Linux amd64/i386
NetBSD amd64 6.1 and newer
CentOS/RHEL 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5 and 7.0
Debian 6.0.7, 7.0, 7.6 netinstall i386/amd64
Fedora 20
OpenSUSE 12.3 and 13.1 amd64
Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04, 13.04, 14.04 and 14.10 server i386/amd64

Please share more,
Nikos

Can bhyve do non-native guests (M$FT, WinXP or Win7 for example) ? Also,
I can't find any mention of it on my 9.3R-p20 box, is it only available
for 10.0 & higher ?

[Warren Block]

I've recently installed FreeBSD on my home server to replace my linux install
after getting frustrated with some of the newer software.
I'll prefix this question by saying I really like FreeBSD much better so far,
except for the following.
One thing I really liked about my previous system was KVM, Linux's
kernel-supported virtualization. It always worked really well.
I've been trying VirtualBox, QEMU, and bhyve with FreeBSD as a host, but none
of them seem to work anywhere near as well as the KVM on Linux.
VirtualBox seemed to have issues with the networking.

In what way? It has worked pretty well for me. I generally use NAT
unless PXE-booting a VM, then use bridged networking. The PCnet-PCI II
(Am79C970A) works for either, the Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM)
also works well but I think I added the adapter PXE code because it was
not included. There are instructions for this somewhere, but it's not
really needed because the first adapter can be used.

[Paul Pathiakis via freebsd-questions]

Agreed. I just recently (earlier this week) installed VBox on 2
machines, it works just fine. *shrug*

However, moving on, have you looked at jails?

I have over 20 jails running on a single 6 core CPU machine and
everything is smooth and nice. :-)

P.

Post by Warren Block

Post by Kyle
I've recently installed FreeBSD on my home server to replace my linux
install after getting frustrated with some of the newer software.
I'll prefix this question by saying I really like FreeBSD much better
so far, except for the following.
One thing I really liked about my previous system was KVM, Linux's
kernel-supported virtualization. It always worked really well.
I've been trying VirtualBox, QEMU, and bhyve with FreeBSD as a host,
but none of them seem to work anywhere near as well as the KVM on Linux.
VirtualBox seemed to have issues with the networking.

In what way? It has worked pretty well for me. I generally use NAT
unless PXE-booting a VM, then use bridged networking. The PCnet-PCI
II (Am79C970A) works for either, the Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop
(82540EM) also works well but I think I added the adapter PXE code
because it was not included. There are instructions for this
somewhere, but it's not really needed because the first adapter can be
used.
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to

[William A. Mahaffey III]

Agreed. I just recently (earlier this week) installed VBox on 2
machines, it works just fine. *shrug*
However, moving on, have you looked at jails?
I have over 20 jails running on a single 6 core CPU machine and
everything is smooth and nice. :-)
P.

Can jails run non-native guests/VM's (M$FT, for example) ? I thought I
saw something about this online a while back, but haven't been able to
re-acquire it .... I'm on 9.3R-p20, BTW ....

Post by Warren Block

Post by Kyle
I've recently installed FreeBSD on my home server to replace my
linux install after getting frustrated with some of the newer software.
I'll prefix this question by saying I really like FreeBSD much
better so far, except for the following.
One thing I really liked about my previous system was KVM, Linux's
kernel-supported virtualization. It always worked really well.
I've been trying VirtualBox, QEMU, and bhyve with FreeBSD as a host,
but none of them seem to work anywhere near as well as the KVM on Linux.
VirtualBox seemed to have issues with the networking.

In what way? It has worked pretty well for me. I generally use NAT
unless PXE-booting a VM, then use bridged networking. The PCnet-PCI
II (Am79C970A) works for either, the Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop
(82540EM) also works well but I think I added the adapter PXE code
because it was not included. There are instructions for this
somewhere, but it's not really needed because the first adapter can
be used.
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to

_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to

[Terje Elde]

Can jails run non-native guests/VM's (M$FT, for example) ? I thought I saw something about this online a while back, but haven't been able to re-acquire it .... I'm on 9.3R-p20, BTW ....

Jails are not - and this is the good part - virtualization. It's a way of compartmentalizing so you can have multiple FreeBSD installs in different jails, or even just single programs.

For web for example, I'll often run webservers in one jail, and database server in another, to get a degree of isolation between them.

It's not really intended to solve running another operating system, though you might be able to run some linux binaries in a jail.

Terje

[Paul Pathiakis via freebsd-questions]

Post by Terje Elde

Can jails run non-native guests/VM's (M$FT, for example) ? I thought I saw something about this online a while back, but haven't been able to re-acquire it .... I'm on 9.3R-p20, BTW ....

Jails are not - and this is the good part - virtualization. It's a way of compartmentalizing so you can have multiple FreeBSD installs in different jails, or even just single programs.
For web for example, I'll often run webservers in one jail, and database server in another, to get a degree of isolation between them.
It's not really intended to solve running another operating system, though you might be able to run some linux binaries in a jail.
Terje

I agree with the first part. They are not virtualization... they don't
hog resources that they don't need (like CPUs, disk space, etc - They're
to resource sharing like zpools are to ZFS - everything is in one bucket
that everyone shares; Before ZFS, in order to keep logging from wedging
a system, you'd have to create a partition of certain sizes (of course,
prior to the ability to grow filesystems).)

Someone mentioned they are enhanced 'chroot'. Well, chroot has been
proven insecure in many regards over time. Jails have been found to be
secure.

I disagree with the last part. I implemented debootstrap and loaded
Debian 6 when I needed a Linux specific app. *shrug* No big deal.

Same thing for CentOS.

I expect BHYVE will be the virtualization for FreeBSD in the future.

Also, jails are being enhanced to have virtualization "features". That
is, there looks to be work going on to allow the complete
allocation/dedication of resources to a jail. I'm not sure this should
happen, especially CPU/RAM. Of course, if it could be made such that I
have a 16 core CPU and have 32 jails.... I might want to be able to
allow a load of 2.00 in one jail so allow the other 31 to share the
remaining CPUs. Abilities on those lines would keep jails from becoming
the issue that virtualization has... dedicating resources that can't be
used by other virtual machines. I like the fact I don't need to have at
least as many cores as machines in virtualization.

(Of course, they may have resolved this and my knowledge is out of date)

P.

[RW via freebsd-questions]

On Thu, 30 Jul 2015 07:36:10 -0453

Post by William A. Mahaffey III
Can jails run non-native guests/VM's (M$FT, for example) ? I thought
I saw something about this online a while back, but haven't been able
to re-acquire it .... I'm on 9.3R-p20, BTW ....

Jails all share the system kernel, they're like a more sophisticated
version of chroot.

[Paul Pathiakis via freebsd-questions]

Post by William A. Mahaffey III

Agreed. I just recently (earlier this week) installed VBox on 2
machines, it works just fine. *shrug*
However, moving on, have you looked at jails?
I have over 20 jails running on a single 6 core CPU machine and
everything is smooth and nice. :-)
P.

Can jails run non-native guests/VM's (M$FT, for example) ? I thought I
saw something about this online a while back, but haven't been able to
re-acquire it .... I'm on 9.3R-p20, BTW ....

Most everything I've run is FreeBSD now. However, I did get a Debian
machine running according the documents (Article?).

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/install-debian-gnu-linux-using-debootstrap-on-a-freebsd-jail-with-zfs.41470/

Also:

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Jails

I believe that I also got a CentOS 6.0 to run. Here's an article using
CBSD:

http://www.bsdstore.ru/en/jdescr/centos_details.html

P

[Paul Kraus]

Post by Kyle
VirtualBox seemed to have issues with the networking.
Is there anyone who has had better success than me at using FreeBSD as a host for virtualization?

I have many VMs running under VBox on FBSD, but, I always use BRIDGED networking. Which type of network adapter are you using (NAT, Bridged, Internal only, etc.) My guests include FBSD, OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, and even Windows (7, 8, 2008, and 2012), all with no (or very little) issues.

--
Paul Kraus
***@kraus-haus.org

[Doug Sampson]

Post by Paul Kraus
I have many VMs running under VBox on FBSD, but, I always use BRIDGED
networking. Which type of network adapter are you using (NAT, Bridged,
Internal only, etc.) My guests include FBSD, OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, and even
Windows (7, 8, 2008, and 2012), all with no (or very little) issues.

What are the performance characteristics of running Windows as a bhyve guest as opposed to running Windows as a Hyper-V guest or ESXi guest?

Are there documentation online where I can locate in order to run Windows as guests? Seems hard to find these!

~Doug

[Outback Dingo]

Post by Doug Sampson

Post by Paul Kraus
I have many VMs running under VBox on FBSD, but, I always use BRIDGED
networking. Which type of network adapter are you using (NAT, Bridged,
Internal only, etc.) My guests include FBSD, OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, and even
Windows (7, 8, 2008, and 2012), all with no (or very little) issues.

What are the performance characteristics of running Windows as a bhyve
guest as opposed to running Windows as a Hyper-V guest or ESXi guest?
Are there documentation online where I can locate in order to run Windows
as guests? Seems hard to find these!

Guess Im finding it a bit odd nobodies mentioned XEN on FreeBSD yet with
alll the recent work thats been done!

Post by Doug Sampson
~Doug
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "

[Brandon J. Wandersee]

Post by Doug Sampson
What are the performance characteristics of running Windows as a bhyve
guest...?

About as bad as they can get. ;)

https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve
--
=================================================================
:: Brandon Wandersee ::
:: ***@gmail.com ::
==================================================================
'A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools.'
- Douglas Adams
==================================================================

[William A. Mahaffey III]

Post by Brandon J. Wandersee

Post by Doug Sampson
What are the performance characteristics of running Windows as a bhyve
guest...?

About as bad as they can get. ;)
https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve

That wiki page explicitly mentions 9.3 as including bhyve support (under
/etc/ttys support). I am on 9.3R-p20 & I find no mention of bhyve in man
pages or anywhere else .... Is it really there ? TIA & have a good one.

[Adam Vande More]

Post by William A. Mahaffey III
That wiki page explicitly mentions 9.3 as including bhyve support (under
/etc/ttys support). I am on 9.3R-p20 & I find no mention of bhyve in man
pages or anywhere else .... Is it really there ? TIA & have a good one.

Yeah, a bhyve host will run 9.3 as a guest and the guest serial console
should automatically default to on.

[William A. Mahaffey III]

Post by Adam Vande More

Post by William A. Mahaffey III
That wiki page explicitly mentions 9.3 as including bhyve support (under
/etc/ttys support). I am on 9.3R-p20 & I find no mention of bhyve in man
pages or anywhere else .... Is it really there ? TIA & have a good one.

Yeah, a bhyve host will run 9.3 as a guest and the guest serial console
should automatically default to on.

Hmmmm .... OK, I mis-interpretted/misunderstood, I was looking for 9.3R
to run bhyve as a host, any info on that ? Thanks & TIA.

[Anders Jensen-Waud]

Post by William A. Mahaffey III

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 8:03 AM, William A. Mahaffey III

Post by William A. Mahaffey III
That wiki page explicitly mentions 9.3 as including bhyve support (under
/etc/ttys support). I am on 9.3R-p20 & I find no mention of bhyve in man
pages or anywhere else .... Is it really there ? TIA & have a good one.

Yeah, a bhyve host will run 9.3 as a guest and the guest serial console
should automatically default to on.

Hmmmm .... OK, I mis-interpretted/misunderstood, I was looking for
9.3R to run bhyve as a host, any info on that ? Thanks & TIA.

bhyve, to my knowledge, only runs on FreeBSD 10.0 and greater,
unfortunately. If you are looking to virtualisation on 9.3, I recommend
considering VirtualBox.

[Mark Felder]

Post by Kyle
I've recently installed FreeBSD on my home server to replace my linux
install after getting frustrated with some of the newer software.
I'll prefix this question by saying I really like FreeBSD much better so
far, except for the following.
One thing I really liked about my previous system was KVM, Linux's
kernel-supported virtualization. It always worked really well.
I've been trying VirtualBox, QEMU, and bhyve with FreeBSD as a host, but
none of them seem to work anywhere near as well as the KVM on Linux.
VirtualBox seemed to have issues with the networking.
I couldn't get KQEMU to work (it always gave me 'kqemu support: disabled'
in the kqemu console), and QEMU was too slow without it.
bhyve looks good, but it seems from what I've read that it only supports
FreeBSD and grub-bootable VMs.
Is there anyone who has had better success than me at using FreeBSD as a
host for virtualization?
Thanks

You could try Xen dom0 on CURRENT. Michael Dexter has posted pictures of
it running a Windows VM guest. I've been meaning to do the same, but
haven't had time lately. I might get around to it this weekend and maybe
write a blog post about it.