From owner-freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Feb 10 17:18:12 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id AE145A06 for ; Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:18:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: from potato.growveg.org (potato.growveg.org [62.49.247.163]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8D3D612A1 for ; Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:18:11 +0000 (UTC) Received: from john by potato.growveg.org with local (Exim 4.82 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1WCuUS-000P8e-Or for freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org; Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:17:52 +0000 Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:17:52 +0000 From: John To: "freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: virtualbox tips for performance specific to FreeBSD-10 hosts Message-ID: <20140210171752.GC95748@potato.growveg.org> References: <20140208095107.GA1232@potato.growveg.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.22 (2013-10-16) Sender: John X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: john@potato.growveg.org X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on potato.growveg.org); SAEximRunCond expanded to false X-BeenThere: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: Development of Emulators of other operating systems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:18:12 -0000 Hi, thanks for replying. On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 09:39:34AM +0100, Bernhard Fr?hlich wrote: > I would not recommend using VirtualBox on such a box. VirtualBox is a Desktop > Virtualisation product and that specs are too high to make good use of them. > > One issue you will run into is ZFS ARC - with that amount of memory it will take > quite some time to fill up but ZFS ARC and VirtualBox wired memory will start > fighting each other. So I recommend limiting ZFS ARC to some sane amount. > (32GB?) > > VirtualBox has quite a bit more overhead than all the other server > grade virtualisation > products out there and that is especially true for I/O. With FreeBSD > 10 you should > already use AHCI on the host and the linux guests will likely use an > SATA controller > and AHCI too. That should be the minimum and is also what we have already > written down in the vbox tuning notes: > > https://wiki.freebsd.org/VirtualBox/Tuning I had looked at that. I was looking for some tunable on the linux VMs as well. Like I said, performance so far has been OK but I see what you mean by VB being really aimed at desktops. That's the impression I got, too. The running out of ARC is a worry because some of these VMs will be doing (eventually) heavy SQL work. The VMs I have on there at the moment aren't taxing the hardware at all, yet. Probably due to there being only two running on there presently. I think I'll have to familiarise myself with bhyve. Steep learning curve! thanks, -- John