Status of bhyve

[Shane Ambler]

CC'ing to freebsd-virtualization as a better place to ask this.

On 16/02/2017 05:11, Andrea Venturoli wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I've been searching the web for a while, but the info I got is sparse
> (many howtos, little on the big picture) and it's not always clear what
> is current and what is outdated.
>
> I might be in need to permanently run a Windows 64b VM (with SQL server)
> on a new FreeBSD box, so...

Permanently as in a development environment or production?

> What's the current status of bhyve?
> I mean, it is it production ready (meaning no critical feature is
> missing and I can count on this VM to behave properly nearly as much as
> the host)?
> Any difference between 10.3 and 11.0? (I got the idea the former will be
> supported for longer and I'd have to upgrade my poudriere in order to
> install the latter).

11.0 includes a "VNC accessible framebuffer driver" which is not in 10.x
This will allow you to vnc into the bhyve instance during boot to
install/repair windows.

You will need to run poudriere on an 11 host to build 11 packages,
while you can sometimes have success building newer systems than the
host, building 11 packages on a 10 host does fail for many ports.

>
> How well does it run Windows?
> Would I better run W7 instead of W10 (or the other way round)?
> What's the maximum amount of RAM I can dedicate to a VM?
>
>
> How does it compare to VirtualBox wrt to stability and performance?
> (I know I can find benchmarks, but, again, it's hard to tell whether
> they can be trusted or considered current).
>
>
> Should I use a dedicated disk (or disk mirror) for better speed?
> Or should I use a dedicated partition on the host's disk/disk mirror?
> Will a ZFS volume perform as good as a partition?
>
>
>
> Any caveat or hint?
>
>
>
>  bye & Thanks
>     av.



-- 
FreeBSD - the place to B...Sharing Devices

Shane Ambler