Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2017 10:46:34 +0100 From: Harry Schmalzbauer <freebsd@omnilan.de> To: Andrea Venturoli <ml@netfence.it> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Status of bhyve Message-ID: <58A574FA.4030706@omnilan.de> In-Reply-To: <607fc3c1-5546-dbce-488b-983163ff1e98@netfence.it> References: <607fc3c1-5546-dbce-488b-983163ff1e98@netfence.it>
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Bezüglich Andrea Venturoli's Nachricht vom 15.02.2017 19:41 (localtime): > Hello. > > I've been searching the web for a while, but the info I got is sparse > (many howtos, little on the big picture) and it's not always clear > what is current and what is outdated. > > I might be in need to permanently run a Windows 64b VM (with SQL > server) on a new FreeBSD box, so... > > > > What's the current status of bhyve? > I mean, it is it production ready (meaning no critical feature is > missing and I can count on this VM to behave properly nearly as much > as the host)? Hello, it depends on the features you need. I do have one byhve in production instead of ESXi. But some features are incomplete/disfunctional, so if you need a host with more than very basic hypervising capabilities, take these into account: ˇ virtio-blk and jumbo frames (e1000 works with jumbo frames but performance is not comparaable with ESXi e1000(e)) https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=215737 ˇ PCI-Passthru is very picky. If you have a card with BAR memorysize < | != pagesize, byhve(4) won't accept it. ˇ device(9) as block storage backend (virtio-blk, ahci-hd) doesn't work if you use any PCI-passthru device https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=215740 ˇ virtio-blk isn't virtio-win (Windows driver) compatible, guest will crash! ˇ virtio-net doesn't work with latest Windows drivers, which is not a bhyve(4) problem as far as I can tell. Version 0.1.118 works, newer ones are known to have problems on other hypervisors too. ˇ See if_bridge(4) for some limitations (all members need to have exactly the same MTU, uplink gets checksum offloading disabled). Generally, soft-switching capabilities ar not comparable with those of ESXi, especially not the performace (outside netmap world). In FreeBSD-12 you have ptnetmap, which together with netmap provides excellent performance, but I have no idea if this will be megred back into 11-stable, neither if it is production ready. Other than that, it's rock solid for me > Any difference between 10.3 and 11.0? (I got the idea the former will > be supported for longer and I'd have to upgrade my poudriere in order > to install the latter). You can seamlessly update minor release versions in the same major release branch, and there will be a 11.x release wich will also get long term support. I'd take 11-stable (e.g. yoU'll have ahci,hd|cd so you can have one virtual controller with multiple devices instead of multiple controllers), there are snapshots available I think. > How well does it run Windows? > Would I better run W7 instead of W10 (or the other way round)? Both runs fine here utilizing BHYVE_UEFI_CSM.fd, with the limitations mentioned above (no virtio-blk, need stay with ahci-hd). > What's the maximum amount of RAM I can dedicate to a VM? > > > How does it compare to VirtualBox wrt to stability and performance? > (I know I can find benchmarks, but, again, it's hard to tell whether > they can be trusted or considered current). > > > Should I use a dedicated disk (or disk mirror) for better speed? > Or should I use a dedicated partition on the host's disk/disk mirror? > Will a ZFS volume perform as good as a partition? ZVOL is the best option offering great performance (depending on your pool setup of yourse) as long as there is the PCI-passthru bug mentioned above. > Any caveat or hint? Hope the above ones help. -harry
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