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Date:      Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:19:02 -0800
From:      Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD as VM host OS?
Message-ID:  <4586DB96.5020801@u.washington.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20061218123301.c5e0040c.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
References:  <4586ADC2.9030807@networktest.com>	<720051dc0612180832y28d3d545qa6bebdb7feea990f@mail.gmail.com>	<4586CDF3.6050709@networktest.com> <20061218123301.c5e0040c.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>

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Bill Moran wrote:
> In response to David Newman <dnewman@networktest.com>:
>> My question is whether FreeBSD is a suitable _host_ OS for any virtual
>> machine environment, preferably with support for SMP, amd64, and guest
>> OS speed at or close to native hardware speeds.
> 
> *) jails provide virtual hosting at native speed, but _only_ for FreeBSD
>    guests.  i.e., you can't run Linux in a FreeBSD jail
> *) qemu works well on FreeBSD in my experience, but there is a considerable
>    performance hit.
> *) Xen should give you what you want, but I've no information on the
>    status of Xen on FreeBSD at this time.
> 
> HTH

Try qemu. Some people on this list (or maybe other FreeBSD lists--can't
remember :P), have reported success in using qemu as the host VM.

Xen is a royal pain, even though it is fast. I tried setting it up once
under Gentoo and it was trying to load a lot of services at boottime,
pulled in custom (Xen) kernel patched sources, etc. Needless to say, the
Xen patched kernel sources was the show stopper, because one never knows
what in the world the patches may do if installed with other patches.
Moreover, the Xen patches may wreak havoc with userland programs (like
Linux does on occasion), etc.

Just my .02.. qemu has a kernel module, but if you don't feel like
tainting the kernel with an alpha feature, their userland(-only) program
is fairly stable from what I have read.

- -Garrett
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