# What about a new category for Virtualization?



## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 28, 2020)

On that category, we should have forums for VirtualBox and Bhyve. Currently, if we have questions about Bhyve, we can only post it on Off-Topic.


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## SirDice (Aug 28, 2020)

Bhyve is part of the base OS, so general would be more appropriate. Off-topic is for non-FreeBSD questions or general chit-chat.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 28, 2020)

SirDice said:


> Bhyve is part of the base OS, so general would be more appropriate. Off-topic is for non-FreeBSD questions or general chit-chat.


This means I have mistakenly use Off-Topic for my Bhyve threads for a while. Sorry.


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## Mjölnir (Aug 28, 2020)

A sub-category would still make sense, as well as a _VM_ (or _virtualization_) section in the ports tree.
EDIT There is /usr/ports/emulators, but that's different by definition.


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## a6h (Aug 28, 2020)

It make sense to have a dedicated category for VM. But I guess it will fill with topics similar to "jail vs docker", "jail is not docker", "where is docker" etc!


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## Mjölnir (Aug 28, 2020)

There might be some obvious reason that the author choosed the letter F for his sysutils/py-focker


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 28, 2020)

Then we just open another forums for "OS Level Virtualization" or "Containers". Please do not include jails, focker,... in that Virtualization category. Only Bhyve and VirtualBox, please.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 28, 2020)

Almost forgot, I didn't think about case such as running Bhyve inside a jail.


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## ekvz (Aug 28, 2020)

vigole said:


> It make sense to have a dedicated category for VM. But I guess it will fill with topics similar to "jail vs docker", "jail is not docker", "where is docker" etc!



Don't get me started on docker and it's fanboys. Just don't.


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## ekvz (Aug 28, 2020)

sysctl said:


> Then we just open another forums for "OS Level Virtualization" or "Containers". Please do not include jails, focker,... in that Virtualization category. Only Bhyve and VirtualBox, please.



What about Qemu? It seems it's never mentioned in a FreeBSD context. For some time i actually thought it was unsupported but from what i can tell it is in the ports collection. How comes it is so unpopular?


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## SirDice (Aug 28, 2020)

We haven't had a section for virtualization because there just wasn't enough posts to warrant its own section. We're considering creating one now, the number of posts have been steadily increasing and it was always a bit difficult to place those posts in any of the existing sections. 

I'm suggesting a "Virtualization" section, under "Server and networking". That would cover bhyve, Virtualbox, qemu, etc. both as guest and as host. Jails would be included too, as that's also a form of virtualization. There's no point in further splitting it up, you'd end up with nearly empty sections.


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## Alain De Vos (Aug 28, 2020)

bhyve and virtualbox belong together. Because, a general user does not care if it is in base or not.
Likewise sendmail and postfix belong together.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 28, 2020)

ekvz said:


> What about Qemu? It seems it's never mentioned in a FreeBSD context. For some time i actually thought it was unsupported but from what i can tell it is in the ports collection. How comes it is so unpopular?


qemu without kvm acceleration shouldn't be included in Virtualization but Emulation. Unless somehow we could get qemu with Bhyve acceleration. I have seen the NetBSD guys have both qemu with the HAXM acceleration and qemu with the NVMM acceleration so I think it's entirely possible. But I do not expect it to be happen because it seemed there is no interests from the Bhyve or qemu developers.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 28, 2020)

SirDice said:


> I'm suggesting a "Virtualization" section, under "Server and networking". That would cover bhyve, Virtualbox, qemu, etc. both as guest and as host. Jails would be included too, as that's also a form of virtualization. There's no point in further splitting it up, you'd end up with nearly empty sections.


I prefer VirtualBox and Bhyve as separate. They serve two completely different purpose. Bhyve is for enterprise virtualization and VirtualBox is for people simply want to run other OSes virtualized. Mixing the two is not something we should do.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 28, 2020)

Alain De Vos said:


> bhyve and virtualbox *belong together*. Because, a general user does not care if it is in base or not.
> Likewise sendmail and postfix belong together.


No. Bhyve is Bhyve and VirtualBox is VirtualBox. They are completely different products. So please don't mix them.


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## ekvz (Aug 28, 2020)

sysctl said:


> qemu without kvm acceleration shouldn't be included in Virtualization but Emulation. Unless somehow we could get qemu with Bhyve acceleration. I have seen the NetBSD guys have both qemu with the HAXM acceleration and qemu with the NVMM acceleration so I think it's entirely possible. But I do not expect it to be happen because it seemed there is no interests from the Bhyve or qemu developers.



I see. If there is no acceleration it's understandable it doesn't see much use. In my opinion it's still virtualization though. Having to emulate everything in software makes it slow but the general functionality doesn't change. You could still run your VPS company on it. There would just be a ton of complaints and probably zero renewals.


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## SirDice (Aug 28, 2020)

It's not like we're getting swamped with questions about qemu. And for most people that use qemu they use it as a form of virtualization. Emulators could be included too, it's a way to run some other type of machine within a machine. So it's a sort of virtual environment, even if it doesn't use the strict technical definition of virtualization. 

It's going to depend on the exact question if it fits or not. Questions regarding how to install <insert name> virtualization software could also fall in the "Installation and maintenance of ports and packages" category. Questions on how to network two VMs might be better asked in "Networking". 



sysctl said:


> I prefer VirtualBox and Bhyve as separate. They serve two completely different purpose. Bhyve is for enterprise virtualization and VirtualBox is for people simply want to run other OSes virtualized. Mixing the two is not something we should do.


Irrelevant distinction, they both serve the same purpose and have the same basic principles regardless of their usage. Besides that, I know some of our members use Virtualbox in an enterprise environment.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 28, 2020)

SirDice said:


> Irrelevant distinction, they both serve the same purpose and have the same basic principles regardless of their usage. *Besides that, I know some of our members use Virtualbox in an enterprise environment.*


Oh. This is the first time I hear this.


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## Mjölnir (Aug 28, 2020)

sysctl said:


> Oh. This is the first time I hear this.


_VBox_ utilizes of basic virtualization features of the CPU. There might be a highly optimized version available that uses more VM features of the hardware, for enterprise customers who are willing to pay a license & support fee.  Who knows, maybe in the future they will integrate _bhyve_ as a backend.


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## Ole (Aug 29, 2020)

Don't forget *XEN*. This is one of the virtualization options besides bhyve and VBOX. Already big enough material for a new category


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 29, 2020)

Ole said:


> Don't forget *XEN*. This is one of the virtualization options besides bhyve and VBOX. Already big enough material for a new category


Yeah. Almost forgot about Xen. It's not mentioned much here, though. Mostly Bhyve and VirtualBox.


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## SirDice (Oct 13, 2020)

As some may have noticed, I've been offline for a while. I got taken out by some severe repetitive strain injury in my right shoulder. After a few weeks things are looking better, I can move my arm properly again and I'm back at work (half days though). Still have some physical therapy once a week, progress is slow but I'm getting there. It's been mostly painless the last week or so.  

In any case, I was about to create the section when I got taken out.  So things went quiet. But I'm back and I've just created the sub. I've opted to go with "Emulation and Virtualization" as there's a lot of overlap between the two even if they're technically different things. I've also added a few prefixes specifically for this section. These include "jails", "bhyve", "vbox" and "qemu". I can add more if the need arises. 

I've moved this thread to the new section, it's the first thread. I might add a sticky to further explain what should and should not be posted here.


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## DutchDaemon (Oct 13, 2020)

I added vmware, proxmox, xen, hyper-v and a 'general/other' for now. Let's not further differentiate between host/guest/hypervisor stuff; the post should make that clear. Prefixes have been made mandatory in this sub-forum. Either request a new prefix if the current selection doesn't fit, and/or use general/other as temporary parking.


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## DutchDaemon (Oct 13, 2020)

There _may_ be a case for a 'cloud' prefix (think AWS/Azure/Google and other public cloud providers, which are, of course, virtualized). I'll leave that up to developments.


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