Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2021 11:03:19 -0700 From: Jeremy Edberg <jedberg@gmail.com> To: Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org> Cc: "freebsd-cloud@freebsd.org" <freebsd-cloud@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: RFC: Switching FreeBSD/EC2 images to UEFI boot Message-ID: <CACZJDUFZ8BqZ2=HFffyuGqVhVyQBAn8Zo3gW=VRFh0h4qtq9Aw@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <79c48cc2-5341-2cea-7d6e-4372f7c93245@freebsd.org> References: <79c48cc2-5341-2cea-7d6e-4372f7c93245@freebsd.org>
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--0000000000009cbd7205cacaa639 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" I'm always a fan of optimal defaults. If UFEI boot is faster, it should probably be the default, especially if you're still able to generate BIOS boot instances. Unless there is a large group of people who for legal/compliance reasons *must* use the official AMIs and also can't switch to the newer instance types. j On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 9:05 PM Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org> wrote: > Hi Cloudy people, > > We have a decision to make and I'm looking for input from the community: > Should FreeBSD's x86 EC2 AMIs be marked as booting using UEFI instead of > the current (default) BIOS boot mode? > > The argument in favour of sticking with BIOS booting is that the older EC2 > instance types -- up to M4/C4/R4/T2 -- don't support UEFI. There's a full > list of which instance types support UEFI at > > https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ami-boot.html > > but roughly speaking it's a case of "Nitro instances support UEFI while Xen > based instances require BIOS". (Note that whatever decision we make, it > will > still be possible to build AMIs which support BIOS booting -- the question > is > just which mode the official project-published images are marked to use.) > > The argument in favour of switching to UEFI booting is that it's faster -- > around 4.7 seconds faster in my testing. While this may not seem like a > big > difference, it's the difference between being on par with most Linuxes or > lagging far behind; and there's a definite quality-of-life benefit to being > able to spin up an EC2 instance and SSH in to start using it quickly. > (Also > benefits for people using autoscaling, since they can respond to increased > load faster.) > > One obvious question to ask here is "how many people are using the older > instance types which only support BIOS", and I have some data from the AWS > Marketplace about that: > * Instances originally launched on FreeBSD 9.x and 10.x are all using older > instance types. > * About 60% of instances originally launched on FreeBSD 11.x are using > older > instance types. > * About 40% of instances originally launched on FreeBSD 12.x and 13.0 are > using older instance types. > > Almost all of the "older instance type" usage on FreeBSD 12.x and 13.0 is > T2 > family instances, which I suspect is for two reasons: > 1. For a long time I had t2.micro listed as the default instance type on > the AWS Marketplace listings, and > 2. FreeBSD 13.0 has problems on T3 instances due to the TSC timecounter not > working reliably. This problem has now been corrected in HEAD and I'm > hoping > the fix will be MFCed in time for FreeBSD 13.1. > > I don't have any data on instances launched outside of the AWS Marketplace. > > So, as I started this email saying: We have a decision to make and I'm > looking for input from the community. Faster booting, or support for older > EC2 instance types in our published AMIs? > > -- > Colin Percival > Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve > Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid > > --0000000000009cbd7205cacaa639--
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