New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
FreeBSD on a vps
I’ve just finished creating a couple of FreeBSD routers running Quagga for our office and I’d forgotten how much I liked FreeBSD. Prior to this past couple of weeks I hadn’t used it since 2.1.
I’m thinking of getting a KVM vps and installing FreeBSD on there but I’m just wondering about CPU utilization. Assuming your average two core KVM is it going to cause problems for the provider when I’m compiling packages from source? What about compiling a custom kernel?
Any tidbits of useful information I’d need for running it under KVM? I recall reading something about virtio drivers?
Thanks.
Comments
freebsd 9 supports virtio drivers out of kernel. You will have no issues with kvm and freebsd 9 and above.
I can hook you up on dedicated thread where you will be able to max out cpu, It is xen hvm based.
If you are interested let me know
Thanks. Does the provider need to do anything specific on their end? I'm used to just choosing a template and installing it but I see most providers don't have an option for FreeBSD. I just ask them to mount the ISO and I just install through the console?
I am offering 2gb 4 core (equal share) xen hvm package with freebsd isos available in miami for 5 EUR if you're interested drop me a pm happy to give you a free week to make sure it is right for you first.
I run freebsd on that, works great, and as always great service from Anthony @ Inception Hosting. It runs 9.0 at the moment, However later this month i'm doing the 10.0 upgrade..
I use only OpenBSD or FreeBSD with all KVM VPS I have. Availability of iso and virtio depends on the provider. Some panels do offer the choice of virtual drivers (virtio or ata/scsi/realtek/intelpro) and many have FreeBSD in their list of iso. When not, a simple ticket was in most cases enough to have them switch virtio on and connect a BSD iso. The other day it was the case for me with servetheworld.net: lowendtalk.com/discussion/20259/kvm-providers-asking-a-fee-for-custom-iso-also-no-virtio-by-default
In the couple cases a provider didn't want to offer the iso, it's still possible to install: either by tweaking partioning of the linux default template if it comes with a big enough swap partition, ie. you make room for a FreeBSD installation that will be launched from inside the running linux. Or by putting together a ramdisk linux with the vps network settings (so you can ssh the ramlinux), set grub to boot it instead of the on-disk linux and from there launch the BSD installation. In both cases it means running qemu inside kvm-qemu, so ram must be enough (in my experience, 1G ram is ok)
How much disk space is included in that 5EUR plan?
Thanks for your replies guys. @Crab it comes with 40GB. The offer thread is http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/19720/xen-pv-hvm-usa-uk-it-2gb-dedicated-ram-6-80-bsd-linux-windows-3-00-p-year-special#latest . I'm testing it out right now and so far so good.
Thanks, I might give it a spin. It sounds like a tempting offer!
Always happy to offer a risk free week so people can make sure it is right for them.
Freebsd on xen hvm uses pv on hvm kdrivers for optimal performance and has since around 2006 I think.
Netbsd is not great on xen hvm though as the same adoption was never made. I honestly don't know about openbsd though might give it a go.
If you are going to get a few get a small ded and ezjail it.
I had FreeBSD 9.1 on a KVM server and it had a simple web server that I installed from ports. I have since upgraded 9.1 -> 9.2 -> 10.0 from source recompiling and installing everything. The provider hasn't complained about CPU usage yet.
FreeBSD 9.2 and onwards have virtio drivers in GENERIC kernel so you can have virtio devices.