From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Apr 19 18:53:33 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7FEE076B for ; Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:53:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dweimer@dweimer.net) Received: from webmail.dweimer.net (24-240-198-187.static.stls.mo.charter.com [24.240.198.187]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F896169B for ; Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:53:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: from www.dweimer.net (webmail.dweimer.local [192.168.5.2]) by webmail.dweimer.net (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id r3JIdK0Q084937 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:39:20 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dweimer@dweimer.net) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:39:19 -0500 From: dweimer To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Virtual Box on FreeBSD Server Organization: dweimer.net Mail-Reply-To: dweimer@dweimer.net In-Reply-To: <1366375031.22246.YahooMailNeo@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1365927098231-5803691.post@n5.nabble.com> <20130414103154.3a49e6de.freebsd@edvax.de> <1365996890840-5803879.post@n5.nabble.com> <1366004997052-5803900.post@n5.nabble.com> <516F9DD2.6030200@coosemans.org> <1366270329916-5804740.post@n5.nabble.com> <20130418095129.7c6dc564.freebsd@edvax.de> <1366281671523-5804757.post@n5.nabble.com> <20130418133528.GA13082@eris.bzerk.org> <1366293077054-5804802.post@n5.nabble.com> <1366375031.22246.YahooMailNeo@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <24b897da0e5c481de58a8afef5e87be3@dweimer.net> X-Sender: dweimer@dweimer.net User-Agent: Roundcube Webmail/0.8.1 X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list Reply-To: dweimer@dweimer.net List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:53:33 -0000 On 04/19/2013 7:37 am, Bill Tillman wrote: > I've been looking into setting up some Linux servers but instead I'm > thinking that I could use Virtual Box on my FreeBSD servers to do > this. I would like some seasoned advice from others on the following > before proceeding: > > 1. As I understand it you can install Virtual Box from the ports > collection. But then I see the instructions in the Handbook: > >       To launch VirtualBox, type from a Xorg session: > % VirtualBox > So am I to assume the only way to run Virtual Box is to have Xorg > installed and running on the FreeBSD server?  Which is a drag because > my current FreeBSD servers are exactly that, servers, and do not have > the fancy video cards, monitors, etc.. to run Xorg. Is there an > alternative to running the interface from Xorg. I'm a command line > fanatic when it comes to servers. Or would I be able to install Xvnc > or something like that and run it from one of my Windows 7 machines > which has all the fancy video capabilities? > > > 2. Once installed, I will be able to install something like Fedora or > openSUSE? These will only be installed as server so I can run > databases like MySQL in the Linux environment. The client I'm working > for insists on using SUSE...no FreeBSD allowed. They think it's poison > and are very biased on this so there's no talking them out of it. I > need to gain experience using these databases on Linux, not FreeBSD. > > 3. I'm going to buy a 1 TB SATA drive for this setup. It will be > running on an AMD64 server with FreeBSD 9.x or whatever is the latest > release as of this weekend. > > 4. There is also a Plan 'B' to go the other way. Since I already have > two i7 machines running Windows 7, perhaps it might be better to > install the Windows version of Virtual Box or even VMWare and create > my instances of Linux on one or even both of these machines. > > Any advice would be appreciated. > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to > "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" I just setup a FreeBSD 9.1p2 server to run Virtual Box myself, you don't need X, you can launch machines with VBoxHeadless --startvm "VM NAME". (using VNC to connect to the consoles of them) Creating and configuring them takes a bit more, and as I am only on the second day of getting this figured out, I am not the best person to go more into detail. I actually created my vms on windows moved them over to FreeBSD the server to run them. It can all be done command line, just takes a while to learn. I am running mine on a AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1075T Processor, with 16G ram, so far I have had three VMs running at once, two FreeBSD 9.1p2 and one windows 2008r2, 3G ram assigned to each. Performance so far has been great, I will have it down to one VM in a few days, as I will convert the two FreeBSD VMs into jails, and just be left with the windows 2008r2 vm. the disks in my system are 2 Sata3 1TB volumes, with FreeBSD host installed on ZFS in mirrored zpool. Also running the 2 FreeBSD VMs from this mirror as well, and the sytem drive of the Windows server. The Windows server has a second data drive, that is mounted off 4 500MB SATA2 drives in a zfs raidz. Disk performance is better than what I had testing this setup on Windows 7 with Virtual box, using a hardware raid 10 on the 500MB drives and hardware mirror on the 1TB drives. I intend to migrate the windows data drive from a virtual disk to an iSCSI disk pointed to the same 500MB raidz once I get the FreeBSD iSCSI target setup figured out. This should hopefully get a little more speed out of the setup. Unfortunately as this setup is still in its early stages, I can't attest to how stable it will be. -- Thanks, Dean E. Weimer http://www.dweimer.net/