As an author I found this topic and I have some opinion about FreeBSD, Bhyve and its tools and BVCP.
.raw disk images are gives more flexibility and UEFI provides the installation future-proof so .raw images could be ported towards vmWare, VirtualBox, and so on, BVCP has API so you can fix things at commandline too. These are important things especially if you run a lot of production VMs that must be run.
Comparing BVCP to command-line scripts isnt fair, due they are using shared resources and depedencies, BVCP ships everything in a single package, which elliminiates disasters when you mess up the pkg and the ports for example when you partially upgrade your system then fails start anything due incompatibility. (happens a lot for me on dev machines)
Scripts does not have built-in webserver and VNC tunneling, websockets and so on.
BVCP could be used as independently from the OS and packages, so literally every BSD BOX could be turn into VM hypervisor, you can completely reinstall your system without any trouble with VMs running on the background. At 2022 everyone suggested to be more energy-efficient (If not yet) due energy prices, this modell allowed me to build hassle-free "cluster" with machines that not primarily intended for virtualisation.
I got a ton of response and help requests even if its childplay, people interested about virtualisation on Bhyve and FreeBSD, but do not have enough patience and knowledge or time to self manage their VMs. The short term consequence is a lot of people tried FreeBSD for first time because the graphical interface that BVCP offers, thats a win for me and for FreeBSD I guess.
Im aging as everyone and handling a ton of servers, now I have better things to do so graphical interfaces really made some part of my job easier, also I eliminated that annoys me the most, BVCP is running unprivileged unlike many others also it has enhanced security built-in and I get an email on log-in and even if the session stolen by an attacker.
Despite all of this I have to say that Im using it for enterprise-level and production where many more rules forcefully applied, such as manageability.
Like Investors, Leadershipment, who dont understand and care about serial console or even a pretty graphical terminal, what they would like to see is a graphical interface, including the fact if every IT personnel kidnapped they would like to manage theirself. O_O
By the way I tested every option for Bhyve including command line and graphical interfaces and I found out that FreeBSD still get a kernel panic on some scenarios like if you removing bridges on-the-fly, so it was a question how to use this in production? - i know, dont mess up, but .. - well I started writing scripts to avoid any potentional CHAOS and I ended up to the BVCP.
Worth to mention some existing tools especially which have remote access have some serious security concerns when I tested. Also I dont think so that the webinterface should be accessed by 'root' or running with root privilege.
So in conclusion I wanted a ProxMox for FreeBSD but with elevated security and I got it and shared it, however no free-lunch yet so its closed source, but it has real support in exchange for free of charge which is unlikely nowadays.
I understand the mean of the unixish feeling and really BSD part of my life since 2004 but the most of people scared out from FreeBSD due lack of human readable interface.
