Bhyve alternative?

[tyguy56]

Need to run a windows server vm inside FreeNAS 11.0-U3, however I am using dual xeon e5520 cpus which according to the docs and the grep command

Code:

VT-x: PAT,HLT,MTF,PAUSE,EPT,VPID

they support extended page tables but don't support UGfeatures. I understand that you can run a vm inside a jail but last I heard they were still fairly buggy. Is there any alternatives to bhyve or documented examples of similar circumstances?

 

[Allan Wilmath]

My suggestion would be to virtualize FreeNAS using a Type 1 hypervisor, then you could run anything you cared too along side FreeNAS. The only piece of hardware you would need is a compatible LSI SAS controller, which you may already have. You can create block storage in FreeNAS and then use that in the hypervisor for VMs a lot like you would if you ran VM in FreeNAS.

The management tools are much better with ESXi using the client based web add-on, they call add-ons flings. Xen has a nice Windows based tool for administering it. Microsoft has Hyper-V, but unless you are using a domain it is not so easy to manage.

The feature you will need to use for it work right is called PCI passthrough. VT-D on an Intel system, you pretty have to have it since you are running a dual socket motherboard. You could even convert you current install to a VM by using dd to save the current bootable image to a file, and then stream that file to a VM hard drive image. You then configure the SAS card for PCI-passthrough and connect it to the virtual machine. Interestingly, you could get better performance that way since you can use virtual NICs and switches between the FreeNAS VM and the other VMs that would exceed gigabit, even set the MTU to 9K transfers. The networking is much better going this route than with FreeNAS.

Xen from Citrix is free, not to be confused with Xen which is available on Linux. Xen from Citrix is free and can easily be installed and managed. The version of Xen in linux, not so much. ESXi has a free license as well. Not sure if you are running in a business environment and what the implications are for non personal use.

I use VMware Fusion to make the VMs and then upload them to ESXi. Works very well. I even have Corral running Plex in a Docker container via nested virtualization. The only thing ESXi is picky about is network interfaces. Most enterprise work fine, cheap consumer not so much. You are using a server grade board so should just work.

To answer your original question, bhyve is your only option for FreeBSD.