FBSD jail versus VMWare? What services do YOU run in a jail?

[Alejandro Imass]

>    On 14-04-22 3:47 PM, edflecko . wrote:
>
> I'm really interested in the comparison of using a FBSD jail rather than
> VMWare in the context of virtualization.
>
> At my business, we heavily use VMWare - you might say we consider ourselves
> a VMWare "shop". 99% of our servers are virtualized.
>
> I've heard that it's possible to run hundreds, if not thousands, of
> services in FBSD jails on a given host server because of the sharing of
> resources that all of your jails take advantage of. If I understand that
> correctly, that's one of the HUGE advantages of running services in jails
> as opposed to creating VM after VM after VM - each VM eats up disk space on
> the SAN as well as memory resources, etc. Additionally, the jailed service
> is far better from a security perspective?
>
> Having said all of that, I'm curious to hear from some of you who may be
> doing just this - are you running a FBSD server with some of your mission
> critical services (Apache, Bind, DHCP, etc., etc.) within jails and how do
> you like it versus running hundreds of VMs and VMWare?
>

Hi Ed,

I have used FBSD Jails for many years running dozens and dozens of
jails per severs. I use EZJail which simplifies the set-up and further
reduces the disk space usage as all jails derive from a single base
jail, and greatly simplifies upgrades and many other jail related
tasks. EZJail is an awesome addition to Jails and you will feel almost
like in VMWare. For example, I routinely archive and move jails around
my servers! (so long as you keep all your servers up to date) So with
EZJail it's almost like using VMWare, if not better. No GUI though ;-)

> What type of services CAN be run from within a jail?
>

Basically anything. AFAIK

Best,

Alejandro Imass