From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 1 09:12:58 2011 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 2469B1065673 for ; Tue, 1 Mar 2011 09:12:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from valentin.bud@gmail.com) Received: from mail-yi0-f54.google.com (mail-yi0-f54.google.com [209.85.218.54]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D5E1F8FC27 for ; Tue, 1 Mar 2011 09:12:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: by yie12 with SMTP id 12so1155166yie.13 for ; Tue, 01 Mar 2011 01:12:57 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:from:date:message-id:subject:to :content-type; bh=QIIV5/F5/umfRO/w+X+n7rawehTvy9V19mlWmZpzjRU=; b=C5OE76hP0c4nRk82Qo1cAP1NDkSVXN1DTUY94SGgmIROpWg+8TSYe7fbTd09G8vrY2 G+XDGQgsOj2SD6UUyMqhUnqi9kCkeOKr9gm4DVMRdNC2RYGY4cyfrMaq6e2Fzpx4Gcl8 HHSvWMPi3vWjZL9h2iJKDSfGNvDzXU+BEwEhE= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:from:date:message-id:subject:to:content-type; b=hP6gFmR2Cj6GcCWtfnhJD/oQ+e2SytjApQ5mgb7JDdKgFpxTEEJdPZvsyvOOatw7EK /r2UKDTTN0izRmS12Tj40uxhM6RfLSefUesYQuLXcB4XTU9m01sYupw3eRk5wH0ikZFz 55XtQ7KFipKyWiZyAycijb+cxOTrUtR1BuzZQ= Received: by 10.100.206.3 with SMTP id d3mr2807100ang.44.1298970777084; Tue, 01 Mar 2011 01:12:57 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.101.217.19 with HTTP; Tue, 1 Mar 2011 01:12:37 -0800 (PST) From: Valentin Bud Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 11:12:37 +0200 Message-ID: To: freebsd-questions Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Subject: Custom FreeBSD "appliance" X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:12:58 -0000 Hello community, We have started using virtualization platforms at work, a mix of ESXi and KVM. Until now I had no problems running FreeBSD (full ZFS) as a guest on neither of them. Some might say this is not optimal neither safe but we have a dedicated server (10 GB RAM, Intel Quad Core) running 8-STABLE with ZFS for backing up all the VMs that we have. We have quite a few apps we use, from Apache to MySQL, ghostscript and others. Until I've heard of virtualization all the apps were running on a single dedicated server. I remember once I had to update some appX which depended on some libX-new-version and the other appY depended on libX-past-version. I had to roll back the update, quite a pain and some downtime. No more of that when I've heard about jails. At first I've used jails,which are great (thanks FreeBSD for this). I do use them in some parts of the environment and I am very happy with them. We chose KVM/ESXi because we have a mixture of debian, Windows and FreeBSD machines we need to do the job. I have been thinking lately to build specialized robots (as I call them) for a certain task. A specialized robot for me is a custom FreeBSD install with a certain package (eg. MySQL), with all the tuning done for that particular app, starting from FS to memory optimization, network optimization and the like. What do you think about this? I would like to build that custom install *exactly* with what's needed by that particular app, no more no less. Where would be a great place to start? I suppose the build system and src.conf would be a start. How can I find what a certain app really needs? For example if I want to build a robot that does outgoing SMTP using postfix, what are the stuff that need to be build/loaded into base system for this to work? This way I can save memory, boot speed, security. What do you think of all this? Your comments are greatly appreciated. thanks, v -- network warrior