Bhyve now supports Windows 2012 (Say goodbye to VirtualBox?)

[jrm@]

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&sortby=date&revision=288522

Added: Bhyve now supports Windows 2012r2 in CURRENT r288524. It requires this UEFI firmware: https://people.freebsd.org/~grehan/bhyve_uefi/BHYVE_UEFI_20151002.fd. Via Benjamin Perrault.

 

[Cthulhux]

IMO, both software solutions solve a different problem.

 

[jrm@]

What am I missing? Once Bhyve supports more OS choices with performance similar to what it has now for Linux VMs, I'll be ditching VirtualBox. The only reason I can think of to keep VB around would be if you have older hardware that Bhyve doesn't support. The biggest drawback with VB hosts on FreeBSD is the lack of official support, which means no extension pack and no USB 2.0/3.0.

 

[Oko]

What am I missing? Once Bhyve supports more OS choices with performance similar to what it has now for Linux VMs, I'll be ditching VirtualBox. The only reason I can think of to keep VB around would be if you have older hardware that Bhyve doesn't support. The biggest drawback with VB hosts on FreeBSD is the lack of official support, which means no extension pack and no USB 2.0/3.0.

The biggest problem with bhyve for me personally is a lack of high-level system admin tool. I see some progress with iohyve:

https://github.com/pr1ntf/iohyve

But I don't see it in ports. Personally I will probably not playing with bhyve before iohyve hits the ports.

 

[protocelt]

The biggest problem with bhyve for me personally is a lack of high level system admin tool. I see some progress with iohyve

https://github.com/pr1ntf/iohyve

but I don't see it in ports. Personally I will probably not playing with bhyve before iohyve hits the ports.

Nothing wrong with that, but I'm curious why? It's not like your uncomfortable with the command line. I've always found it advantageous getting used to tools at a lower level before using higher level wrappers and such. It makes troubleshooting that much easier should something go wrong if you know how something is supposed to work at a lower level.

 

[Crivens]

VirtualBox will not die, if only for this reason - build system distribution and archiving. Once you can say that all of the staff are using the exact same compiler, libraries, ... this will take some burden away from the toolchain admin and tester team. Also, the ability to pull a disk image from the version control system which was used to build the delivery from some date makes debugging and reproducing things much easier. This is also possible with a hypervisor, but I think it is more trouble that way.

 

[gkontos]

I know that it pulls a lot of dependencies but deskutils/virt-manager seems to be working with Bhyve.

 

[acheron]

The biggest problem with bhyve for me personally is a lack of high-level system admin tool. I see some progress with iohyve:

https://github.com/pr1ntf/iohyve

But I don't see it in ports. Personally I will probably not playing with bhyve before iohyve hits the ports.

I've made a port:
http://mikael.urankar.free.fr/FreeBSD/iohyve.shar

 

[vermaden]

The biggest drawback with VB hosts on FreeBSD is the lack of official support, which means no extension pack and no USB 2.0/3.0.

For me the biggest drawback is lack of stability of VirtualBox on FreeBSD, random guest machine freezes/crashes are very common.

 

[Oko]

For me the biggest drawback is lack of stability of VirtualBox on FreeBSD, random guest machine freezes/crashes are very common.

That was exactly my experience from two years ago when I was trying to move away from RHEL to FreeBSD on our main virtualization hosts (I have 3 virtual hosts with over 30 guests). In the mean time I migrated all our production virtual hosts to KVM for stability ans simplicity reasons. We still use VirtualBox in the lab but mostly on the developer desktops running RHEL if we need quick and dirty tests of our applications on Windows or when they need to use Microsoft Office or Internet Explorer. I actually like VirtualBox in that role.

Moving away from KVM will not be easy sell even in the place like mine where with exception of virtual hosts entire infrastructure runs 100% BSDs (computing nodes and desktops run RHEL). There are several reasons for that. We already use Jails, KVM, VirtualBox and I have even a legacy Xen host having a single guest. Xen guest will be rebuilt in FreeBSD but that leaves me with 3 different virtualization technologies Jails, KVM, and VirtualBox. I see the diversity as the main enemy of the productivity. Somebody will probably suggest I just migrate all KVM instances to Bhyve but that is not so easy. Namely sometimes we have to run KVM on a computing node. I am also not eager to repeat the exercise less than 2 years after I moved most of the stuff from VirtualBox to KVM. I would really have to have a good reason (running Bhyve guest on the top of ZFS pool with periodic snapshots and remote replication for example) to do such project.

 

[ANOKNUSA]

What am I missing?

VirtualBox isn't strictly aimed at enterprise data farms. I'll say goodbye to VirtualBox when bhyve allows me to run Windows 10 from my second bare-metal disk to access the Adobe Creative Suite. So, never.

Incidentally, I need those tools for university courses/work, so your thread title scared the living hell out of me.

 

[jrm@]

Incidentally, I need those tools for university courses/work, so your thread title scared the living hell out of me.

Yeah, I blame my excitement for the over-the-top title. If I could have a mulligan, maybe something like "Can we ditch VirtualBox soon?". My worst habit is to use superlatives when I get excited, e.g., "...biggest drawback with VB hosts..." (Yes, the irony was intended.)

 

[kpa]

I honestly thought that the FreeBSD VB port was going to be ditched when I first saw the thread title.

 

[jrm@]

D'oh, sorry. OK, I'll change the title.

 

[fxlv]

Are there any docs on booting Windows under bhyve?
For Linux and BSD there are instructions on the wiki and the handbook but could someone provide any pointers how to get Windows running?

 

[jrm@]

In addition to #bhyve / win2k12r2 - #smartOS latest also works with this http://people.freebsd.org/~grehan/bhyve_uefi/BHYVE_UEFI_CSM_20151002.fd … firmware. I actually have an install Video done - will post when back in US. So Windows AND SmartOS in time for @eurobsdcon - insanely solid work @nahannisys #epic #bhyve

Maybe this will be helpful until there is official documentation.

 

[jrm@]

Note the changes to the Bhyve wiki specifically under What VM operating systems does bhyve support? and Windows unattended build templates.

 

[asteriskRoss]

your thread title scared the living hell out of me.

I honestly thought that the FreeBSD VB port was going to be ditched when I first saw the thread title.

Similarly with the original thread title I wondered whether Oracle might have been taking development forward as closed-source (like ZFS)! I'm pleased it's just news about Bhyve progressing

 

[jrm@]

More information and instructions: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=0+0+current/freebsd-virtualization

 

[pr1ntf]

I've made a port:
http://mikael.urankar.free.fr/FreeBSD/iohyve.shar

pr1ntf here....
Dude, you rock.
I have been getting iohyve ready for ports. Next major version, v0.7 should be added to official ports.
Nailing down some ZFS stuff along with some newb-like bugs that can break things if not kept in check.
Been keeping busy with the Windows stuff this weekend instead though.

Any help, testing, and feedback is much appreciated!

 

[Beastie7]

pr1ntf here....
Dude, you rock.
I have been getting iohyve ready for ports. Next major version, v0.7 should be added to official ports.
Nailing down some ZFS stuff along with some newb-like bugs that can break things if not kept in check.
Been keeping busy with the Windows stuff this weekend instead though.

Any help, testing, and feedback is much appreciated!

Can you implement some type of virtual switch where one can easily setup v(x)lans and NAT? I'm sure you can wrap your script around bridge(4), ifconfig(8), tap(4) or something. Hopefully as FreeBSD supports more switching protocols, this feature can grow.

Great work btw. Definitely helping spearheading the adoption and readiness of bhyve.

 

[vermaden]

I would really have to have a good reason (running Bhyve guest on the top of ZFS pool with periodic snapshots and remote replication for example) to do such project.

I assume that you know IOHYVE?
https://github.com/pr1ntf/iohyve

 

[pr1ntf]

Can you implement some type of virtual switch where one can easily setup v(x)lans and NAT? I'm sure you can wrap your script around bridge(4), ifconfig(8), tap(4) or something. Hopefully as FreeBSD supports more switching protocols, this feature can grow.

Great work btw. Definitely helping spearheading the adoption and readiness of bhyve.

Thanks for the kind words!

Yes, having guests behind some sort of NAT or switch is planned for the future. Wanting to build things where either the iohyve host can act as a firewall, or you can implement your own guest firewall.
I've got my nose in some pf man pages as well as having The Book of PF on my amazon wishlist.
Nailing down ZFS tweaks to speed things up, as well as snapshotting and independent cloning before I tackle networking and multiple NICs.

The goal is by 1.0 to have many of the same features as VirtualBox. I know the goal of bhyve right now is to compare to KVM, but I want iohyve to be as simple and useful as VirtualBox, but with ZFS.
(Thus me coming out of the woodwork to post in this thread )

 

[Beastie7]

Thanks for the kind words!

Yes, having guests behind some sort of NAT or switch is planned for the future. Wanting to build things where either the iohyve host can act as a firewall, or you can implement your own guest firewall.
I've got my nose in some pf man pages as well as having The Book of PF on my amazon wishlist.
Nailing down ZFS tweaks to speed things up, as well as snapshotting and independent cloning before I tackle networking and multiple NICs.

The goal is by 1.0 to have many of the same features as VirtualBox. I know the goal of bhyve right now is to compare to KVM, but I want iohyve to be as simple and useful as VirtualBox, but with ZFS.
(Thus me coming out of the woodwork to post in this thread )

Sweet! I'm looking forward to it!

 

[abishai]

I prefer https://github.com/churchers/vm-bhyve It has wonderful virtual switch management.
I hope it hits port collection https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=202225