Bhyve tests and findings

[Matt Churchyard]

>Hi,
>after waiting for UEFI-GOP and using bhyve (with vm-bhyve as a convenient tool) an a new E3-1225 v5 based system, the following are my findings >so far.
>(BTW:
>   Currently my rational for running bhyve is twofold:
>   - Run a Windows 8.1 or 10 instance for accessing different remote locations via different VPN solutions
>   - Run Centos7/RHEL7 instances with SAP Systems on it
>)

>But first a huge Thanks to all who worked on bhyve and made it usable in its current state.
>That alone is quite impressive.

>What works so far:
>- Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 installs and runs in graphical mode flawlessly.
>- Centos7 installs and runs too using the UEFI-GOP Image (Yeah, no more Grub fiddling :-)
>- I was able to graphically Restore/Reconfigure a Acronis Windows-Backup into a Bhyve instance
>   using the Acronis Restore-CD (Converting a BIOS Win8.1 to UEFI Win8.1)


> What doesn't:
>- Only vnclient from FreeBSD can connect to the bhyve VNC Server.
>   I havn't found any vncviewer running on Windows which where able to work (tried UltraVNC, RealVNC, ...)

I've been using TightVNC on Windows (first free client I came across) since GOP support came out and have not had any problems with it.

> - in VNC only most basic Keys work most special characters like (*\@) (and of course no german localization)
>  but at least a usual US-kbd would be helpful.

It's not clear whether you're saying that those special character have a problem or not?
I'm in the UK and these keys seem to work fine in the VNC client I'm using.

 >  (Is there a way to debug the keystrokes or duplicate a localized VNC kbd from some VNC server)
>- For the SAP-Systems it seems that only 4 disks get used when the disk type is virtio-blk.
>   (Is this intentionally or a feature of vm-bhyve? How to provide more disks)

I know that the UEFI firmware only connects slots 3/4/5/6, but I don't know if some guests can support non-boot disks on other slots. In my bhyve manager I used to limit Windows to 3 disks (+1 cd), however I have tested 8 disks in Server2012 with a FreeBSD 12 host, which allows up to 32 disks per ahci controller.

>- It seems to miss a way to add an ISO CD/DVD without booting from it automatically.
>   Also ISO's seem to miss a hot-plug feature (f.e. for inserting driver CD's after installation.

I've just tried adding a bootable CD to bhyve as a second device and yes, it does appear to try and boot from it even though the hdd is bootable.
I'm sure I've seen a UEFI cli at some point but I don't know if there's any way to configure boot order (devs?)
Obviously hot-plug CD would be nice and I expect is a feature that would come eventually once the basics are finished.

>Some additional questions:
>- Can one over-provisioning/ballooning guest memory's ?
>- Is it (speed-wise) better to use ZFS-zvol's or files in regular ZFS-directories?
>- Are the virtio-blk or ahci-hd disks having the same overhead?
>- Can ahci-hd be used paravirtualized in Centos?

These are probably all questions for the devs...

Matt

>Thanks in advance!

>All in all it looks quite promising!

>Greetings
>---
Mike
>
>Gruß
>---
>Michael Reifenberger

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