FreeBSD on Amazon EC2

At meetBSD Kip Macy mentioned that Amazon either needs to upgrade the version of Xen used to run EC2 to 3.3 (I think, number may be wrong), or else he'd have to commit a very, very ugly patch to make freeBSD's memory management system work on the older Xen they run.

So at the moment the answer is not easily.
 
Brought this thread back from the dead.

According to Amazon their new EC2 "Reserved Instances" support FreeBSD:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/

"Q: What operating system environments are supported?

Amazon EC2 currently supports a variety of operating systems including: RedHat Linux, Windows Server, openSuSE Linux, Fedora, Debian, OpenSolaris, Cent OS, Gentoo Linux, Oracle Linux, and FreeBSD. We are looking for ways to expand it to other platforms in future releases."

I have yet to see any public AMI's!
 
df-sean said:
So *nobody* on Earth is running FreeBSD on AWS?

Anyone? Hello?

:)
Click to expand...

I just did a fresh install on a server using 7.2 and I am trying to build the AMI myself even though the amazon documentation about the process isn't great (the example for creating a new AMI is using a fedora server and I get confused when see yum configuration files all over the place).

If i do manage to build it and upload it I'll give you a shout and you might then take the AMI down and modify it.
 
aragon said:
Well, those who need it, why don't you hassle Amazon to upgrade their Xen?
Click to expand...
1.png

got answer?
 
I've been speaking with Jeff Barr @ Amazon of the renewed public interest in FreeBSD on Amazon EC2. He said he was going to pass this on to the EC2 team - that there's still a demand for it, and that we do have a developer to work on it (apparently this is a good sign).

As I see it, there are two options. We can either cross our fingers and hope that Amazon does see the value of FreeBSD on EC2 and takes steps to help us, or we can work on finding companies and people that are interested enough in seeing this work that they are willing to pay someone to do the work. I'm still working on getting a quote for how much time/money this is going to take.
 
jdereus said:
In the mean time, this is a competitor that offers FreeBSD installation, and a 5-day free trial.
http://www.elastichosts.com/
Click to expand...

Hi, first hello all I'm a (freelance) FreeBSD's server admin since one year ago, more or less, I've been several years using OpenBSD in my own servers, OpenBSD is an OS that also like a lot, but last year I found out that FreeBSD fits my needs (generally) quite better.

I've been searching for a cloud solution based on FreeBSD last weeks and sadly I've found nothing useful for my needs, I've tried elastichosts.com but the hard disks' IO ratio is a pain, LESS than 1 MB/s with a
Code: 
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=test_file bs=64K count=1K

The curious thing is that this isn't a specifical BSD behavior, installed a CentOS distribution in another V-host with almost the same results in my little test, also I've wrote a week ago to the technical department and no answer, I resend it to the sales dp...

So for me, right now there's no alternative here in Europe to explore the cloud via FreeBSD :(
 
For those that don't want to wait, a word of encouragement...

I did not want to wait for FreeBSD to move my (small) web server to the EC2 - I needed the cost savings ASAP.

I reviewed (at length) this thread to try and decide which Linux might be best for a FreeBSD lover. Sadly, threads like those end up filled with useless remarks. But after spending ages wading through the "I like FreeBSD" submissions, I decided to try Debian.

It was pretty easy to set up, and virtually everything I needed in terms of instruction was to be found easily on Google. It did not take long at all. I used Debian 5 Lenny on EBS.

A couple of tips come to mind:

1. Start/Stop Service scripts are in /etc/init.d/

2. Although there are AMIs with LAMP setups ready-made, chances are you will want to grab a base image, as you will likely want to update everything anyway.

3. Sending mail from your web apps can be tricky. It's fairly easy to set up ssmtp to send via a Google Apps account, but if you want to use custom "From:" addresses, check here. Note that due to AWS IPs being considered spammy, you should configure an SPF record if you want to mail directly from your virtual server.

I guess that's all for now...

I have reduced my hosting costs for web service by 75% _AND_ I no longer have to pay for or worry about the hardware!
 
dave said:
I reviewed (at length) this thread to try and decide which Linux might be best for a FreeBSD lover. Sadly, threads like those end up filled with useless remarks. But after spending ages wading through the "I like FreeBSD" submissions, I decided to try Debian.
Click to expand...

Personally, if someday I'm trying some Linux for servers, I'll go with Arch Linux, it has, like FreeBSD both install methods easily available, "ports" and packages, and IMO is the closest Linux distribution to FreeBSD philosophy. But by now I prefer to wait, (even it makes me spend more money that I want renting a physical server), I don't wanna loose Jails, Packet Filter, the wonderful tools to admin packages (portinstall & portupgrade), ZFS... Of course, Debian is a great server's distro also...
 
I'll chime in... I also went with Debian 5 in the absence of FreeBSD. I have to say that overall, I'm very pleased with it. The minimal install leaves you with a very clean launchpad (which is one of the big attractions of FreeBSD for me).

The apt-get system is of course awesome. I'd go so far as to say that I like some aspects of Debian better than FreeBSD. At the end of the day, I'll continue to use and love FreeBSD wherever possible. But wherever not possible (like EC2 for now at least), I'll happily use Debian.
 
@RkG
I've tried elastichosts.com but the hard disks' IO ratio is a pain, LESS than 1 MB/s with a
Code: 
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=test_file bs=64K count=1K
The curious thing is that this isn't a specifical BSD behavior, installed a CentOS distribution in another V-host with almost the same results in my little test, also I've wrote a week ago to the technical department and no answer, I resend it to the sales dp...

So for me, right now there's no alternative here in Europe to explore the cloud via FreeBSD
Click to expand...

I've been using ElasticHosts with FreeBSD 7.3 (I think they have also 8.0 available now) for a month now and I must say that I'm very happy with the performance of my V-Server and their services in general!
Something strange happened with your trial... because one of the things that really made me keep with ElasticHosts after the trial was their timely answers to my support/sales questions while I was evaluating!
 
EC2 user-provided linux kernels could launch FreeBSD?

gionata said:
I just did a fresh install on a server using 7.2 and I am trying to build the AMI myself even though the amazon documentation about the process isn't great (the example for creating a new AMI is using a fedora server and I get confused when see yum configuration files all over the place).

If i do manage to build it and upload it I'll give you a shout and you might then take the AMI down and modify it.
Click to expand...

EC2 just announced support for user-provided linux kernels: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/07/use-your-own-kernel-with-amazon-ec2.html

"You could (if you are sufficiently adept) use this facility to launch an operating system that we don't support directly (e.g. FreeBSD)."

Does this get us closer?
 
If you check the freebsd xen mailing list there are some problems with stability with xen/paravirtualization and freebsd. I have run into some problems firsthand although most of it seems to crop up under heavy load.

There are other options out there in regards to using hardware virtualization to setup a freebsd vps. If people want some suggestions you can pm me since I don't want to turn this into an ad for anyone.

True "cloud" options seem to be on the horizon though. If you aren't keeping up with trends Xen is having some problems because it's not part of the linux kernel. This is forcing more hosts to go to something like citrix xen or KVM. KVM is being backed by Red Hat and IBM. The good thing about KVM besides being part of the linux kernel is that it's hardware virtualization. This means you can easily load pretty much any OS you want without any modifications. So with a KVM based cloud you can install freebsd with an unmodified kernel and be up and running very shortly. So by the end of the year I think there will be a lot more options in regards to where you can run FreeBSD in the cloud.

Here is a good article on this topic:

http://searchservervirtualization.t...0,289142,sid94_gci1516376,00.html?track=sy420
 
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