so, FreeBSD on VMware is dead, right?

[Colin Baker]

On Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:12:53 -0600, Michael Scheidell  
<scheidell at freebsd.org> wrote:

> I reached out to a high level sr engineer at VMware and told him there  
> was a lot of companies using FreeBSD on VMware, and a lot more that  
> would, if just VMware gave us some love (fixed, or helped us fix some  
> device drivers).
>
> He asked "how many"?
>
> Well, I sure can't go back to him and tell him that there was only one  
> company who contacted me back who said that they used VMware in  
> production systems, with FreeBSD guest os.
>
> If there isn't anyone else with VMware problems, and I really want to be  
> clear:  VMware is a 'for profit' company, so, small numbers won't  
> impress them, but if there are any companies (aside from the one that  
> contacted me.. you don't have to again, I have your email).
>
> If no one else, I'll call him back on the phone and apologize for  
> bothering him.
>
> I was really hoping to get some of the virtual nic issues, and hgfs  
> issues worked out, but, I guess there isn't enough commercial interest.

My company uses FreeBSD on VMware in production quite extensively.  We've  
had a support case open with VMware for almost two years about guest  
crashes that occur randomly (basically, guests just completely stop  
responding and require reboot.  We've had this happen on different  
hardware, multiple storage backends, multiple FreeBSD versions, multiple  
different VMware clusters), and frequently enough to cause serious  
complaints from users.  VMware has yet to give us any answers, other than  
"enable ____ additional debug logging".  I don't believe they've taken our  
issue seriously, it hasn't been escalated, and it has gone on far too long  
without any solution.

The benefits of their product still outweigh the drawbacks (though we've  
moved the most critical systems back to native hardware), but it's gotten  
to the point in which as soon as a competitor has the features we need,  
we're gone.