From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 7 12:44:43 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F0D0E106564A for ; Thu, 7 May 2009 12:44:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from glarkin@FreeBSD.org) Received: from mail1.sourcehosting.net (113901-app1.sourcehosting.net [72.32.213.11]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C49FB8FC1D for ; Thu, 7 May 2009 12:44:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from glarkin@FreeBSD.org) Received: from mail1.sourcehosting.net ([74.205.51.45] helo=gregory-larkins-macbook-pro.local) by mail1.sourcehosting.net with esmtp (Exim 4.69 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1M22xo-000NdG-5Q; Thu, 07 May 2009 08:44:41 -0400 Message-ID: <4A02D7B4.5070705@FreeBSD.org> Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 08:44:36 -0400 From: Greg Larkin Organization: The FreeBSD Project User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (Macintosh/20090302) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bill Moran References: <4A025F42.50308@calorieking.com> <20090507080157.93c8e5ee.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <20090507080157.93c8e5ee.wmoran@potentialtech.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -4.4 (----) Cc: Warren Guy , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Developing and maintaining a rapidly deployable image of an installed system X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: glarkin@FreeBSD.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 12:44:50 -0000 Bill Moran wrote: [...] > > The host system is a very basic install -- mostly just give it an IP and > add users for the administrators. All the ports and details of their > configs are in the individual jails. It's much more efficient than using > something like VMware, which has horrific performance penalties. > Hi Bill, We've been using VMware with FreeBSD guests for a few years now without any performance problems. In fact, jails even work well within a FreeBSD VM. What kinds of problems have you run into? Responding to the original question, we solved it by creating a FreeBSD VM and storing it as a template in VMware VirtualCenter. Whenever a new VM is needed, the template is deployed and customized with memory, extra disk space, IP address, etc. You can take it further by implementing a tool like Puppet, cfengine or Chef to perform the post-deployment configuration and keep the various recipe files under source control: http://reductivelabs.com/products/puppet/ (in the ports tree) http://www.cfengine.org/ (in the ports tree) http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home (not in the ports tree) Cheers, Greg -- Greg Larkin http://www.FreeBSD.org/ http://twitter.com/sourcehosting