FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report - Second Quarter 2015

[Prasad Joshi]

Hello All,

> bhyve
>
>    Links
>    bhyve FAQ and talks
>     URL: http://www.bhyve.org
>
>    Contact: Peter Grehan <grehan at FreeBSD.org>
>    Contact: Neel Natu <neel at FreeBSD.org>
>    Contact: Tycho Nightingale <tychon at FreeBSD.org>
>    Contact: Allan Jude <freebsd at allanjude.com>
>    Contact: Alexander Motin <mav at FreeBSD.org>
>    Contact: Marcelo Araujo <araujo at FreeBSD.org>
>
>    bhyve is a hypervisor that runs on the FreeBSD/amd64 platform. At
>    present, it runs FreeBSD (8.x or later), Linux i386/x64, OpenBSD
>    i386/amd64, and NetBSD/amd64 guests. Current development is focused on
>    enabling additional guest operating systems and implementing features
>    found in other hypervisors.
>
>    bhyve BoF at BSDCan 2015
>
>    A bhyve BoF was held during lunch hour at BSDCan 2015. It was attended
>    by approximately 60 people.
>
>    Michael Dexter showed Windows Server 2012 running inside bhyve.
>
>    Common themes that came up during the discussion were: bhyve
>    configuration, libvirt and OpenStack integration, best practices, bhyve
>    with ZFS, additional guest support and live migration.
>
>    Google Summer of Code 2015
>
>    A number of bhyve-related proposals were submitted for GSoC 2015 and
>    these four were accepted:
>      * NE2000 device emulation
>      * Porting bhyve to ARM
>      * ptnetmap support in bhyve
>      * PXE boot support in bhyveload
>
>    A number of improvements were made to bhyve this quarter:
>      * GEOM storage backend now works properly with bhyve.
>      * Device model enhancements and new instruction emulations to support
>        Windows guests.
>      * Improve virtio-net performance by disabling queue notifications
>        when not needed.
>      * The dtrace FBT provider now works properly with vmm.ko.
>
>    Marcelo Araujo and Allan Jude created a rough patch to make bhyve parse
>    a config file to replace the existing method of configuration by
>    command line invocation. The rapid pace of advancement in bhyve
>    resulted in requiring a much more complex config file. A new design for
>    the config file, with support for the plugin architecture that will
>    eventually be introduced into bhyve, is now being discussed.
>
> Open tasks:
>
>     1. Improve documentation.
>     2. bhyveucl is a script for starting bhyve instances based on a libUCL
>        config file. More information at
>        https://github.com/allanjude/bhyveucl.
>     3. Add support for virtio-scsi.

I think virtio-scsi support is very interesting.

I skimmed through FreeBSD source, it seems like virtio-scsi guest
driver support is already present in FreeBSD. As far as I can
understand, at the moment the virtio-scsi support is absent in bhyve
host side. It seems like bhyve source implements virtio block
interface, which bhyve uses to attach raw disks to VM. A similar
functionality for virtio scsi devices has to be implemented. Please
let me know if any one has already started working on this. I would be
glad to help with development and/or testing.

Thanks and Regards,
Prasad

>     4. Flexible networking backend: wanproxy, vhost-net
>     5. Support running bhyve as non-root.
>     6. Add filters for popular VM file formats (VMDK, VHD, QCOW2).
>     7. Implement an abstraction layer for video (no X11 or SDL in base
>        system).
>     8. Suspend/resume support.
>     9. Live Migration.
>    10. Nested VT-x support (bhyve in bhyve).
>    11. Support for other architectures (ARM, MIPS, PPC).