# Options for virtual machines on FreeBSD



## BsDjUsTbSd (May 16, 2020)

What options are there for virtual machines on FreeBSD.
I dont' mean freebsd being the virtual machine.
but actually running vms on freebsd


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## Phishfry (May 16, 2020)

Bhyve is native and built into FreeBSD base.








						Chapter 23. Virtualization
					

Virtualization software allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on the same computer




					www.freebsd.org
				




emulators/xen works but you must manually compile devel/libvirt with Xen enabled in the ports options.
You also want sysutils/xen-tools

It really helps to have a beefy machine with plenty of RAM and Cores.

You can also use libvirt with Bhyve and use deskutils/virt-manager for GUI administration.
This way uses a different method than the handbook. You must configure everything in XML files to get libvirt running bhyve.


			libvirt: Bhyve driver


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## BsDjUsTbSd (May 16, 2020)

Thanks for the useful replies guys


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## T-Daemon (May 17, 2020)

There is also emulators/virtualbox-ose .


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## scottro (May 17, 2020)

I've found VirtualBox to be painfully slow with Windows guests. (Haven't tried any of the others though). This has been on two fairly powerful machines and giving the Windows guest 2 processors and 8 GB of RAM. Just my experience.  I imagine bhyve works best as it's builtin.   It could be better documented, but that will come with time.  (For example, the handbook says nothing about a Windows guest, though the wiki now has pages on it. 
https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve/Windows


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## Phishfry (May 17, 2020)

Great video from one of the Bhyve authors. Gives some great history of NetApp's hypervisor for FreeBSD.




_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFaLkxwvYZw_


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