FreeBSD server providers?

juan

I was just wondering how many or which providers here uses FreeBSD as their server OS?

Can you virtualize ovz and kvm on FreeBSD?

I'm on a host with XEN on a bsd as their main os, and it has been very very very stable for the last 2yrs, but i think they still have no idea that LEB exist. They have a pretty decent prices that is still on LEB price range.

fileMEDIA

XEN HVM and KVM can virtualize FreeBSD as guest os.

Bogdacutuu

@fileMEDIA said:
XEN HVM and KVM can virtualize FreeBSD as guest os.

He clearly asked about using FreeBSD as a server OS.

fileMEDIA

@Bogdacutuu said:
He clearly asked about using FreeBSD as a server OS.

Oh sorry, i see it..

FreeBSD supports qemu (kvm) and xen as dom0.

ShardHostSarah

FreeBSD does not work with OpenVZ and efforts to get KVM have been limited. FreeBSD does support jails which have similarities with OpenVZ containers.

SmartOS is a good alternative which is based on Solaris and supports both Solaris Zones and KVM virtualisation.

DomainBop

FreeBSD does support jails

Vds6.net is one of the few LEB providers using FreeBSD (8.3) as a server OS and offering BSD jail VPS's. http://vds6.net/ua46/

jbiloh

Why would you want to use FreeBSD these days?

juan

@jbiloh said:
Why would you want to use FreeBSD these days?

Why would you not?

DomainBop

@jbiloh said:
Why would you want to use FreeBSD these days?

some notable reasons for choosing FreeBSD:

1. Stability

2. ZFS file system is miles ahead of any other file system

3. more robust network stack

...and if you want security OpenBSD can't be beat.

juan

I'm not defending freebsd here, i use debian on some of my KVM leb. It's just a matter of personal preference i guess, though i still see lots of senior sysad that were used to like linux but migrates to bsd after using it. So i dunno.

Anyway, back to the topic, I'm just wondering which providers here uses bsd as their server OS?

Thanks.

Spirit

But no tun/tap/fuse interfaces for jail VPSs?

DomainBop

But no tun/tap/fuse interfaces for jail VPSs?

No, BSD jails and Linux vServer (used by Edis) are 2 virtualization types that aren't VPN friendly.

fileMEDIA

@ShardHost said:
FreeBSD does not work with OpenVZ and efforts to get KVM have been limited. FreeBSD does support jails which have similarities with OpenVZ containers.

FreeBSD supports qemu (kvm)... It have almost the same functionality than qemu in centos or ubuntu/debian. Not only jailed shells.

http://www.strugglingcoder.info/index.php/freebsd-on-freebsd-using-qemu/

fly

@jbiloh said:
Why would you want to use FreeBSD these days?

idk, ask netflix maybe? Or maybe Sony?

marrco

@jbiloh said:
Why would you want to use FreeBSD these days?

firewall, nas and many other serious uses. (nas4free and freenas support zfs, and pfsense is my favorite firewall)

juan

pfsense and zfs, hands down.

nikcub

@DomainBop said:
Vds6.net is one of the few LEB providers using FreeBSD (8.3) as a server OS and offering BSD jail VPS's

Interesting as, if my memory serves me correctly, it was FreeBSD that kicked off the VPS market with jail(8). My first ever VPS in 2000 was a 128MB FreeBSD jail that cost $65 per month - the idea of having root on a server that was virtualized and a fraction of the cost was a real eye-opener then.

@juan said:
Why would you want to use FreeBSD these days?

Linux has closed the gap considerably. If you look up Netcraft surveys from the late 90s and early 00's FreeBSD was powering a lot of the top websites. Linux wasn't really as stable until 2.4 (IIRC) and even then still had problems. I switched off FreeBSD to Linux in around 1998, and I was a huge FreeBSD supporter - contributing to the project, etc.

Back then FreeBSD was essential, not so much now. You can't overestimate just how popular FreeBSD was with web hosts, ISP's and as a web server operting system. It has a much older and stable code base, the project was focused on performance (where Linux spent a lot of effort focused on hardware support and desktop). It also had early SMP support and clustering, and very different kernel architectures (which was argued vigorously at the time) - but both BSD and Linux have taken architecture tips from one another in hybrid approaches (BSD was monolithic, Linux modular, Mach (which went on to power OS X) different again with a tiny core kernel and servers).

The reasons you might choose FreeBSD over Linux today are (warning: some of these points have a tendency of igniting ferocious partizan debate):

• You need the BSD license to distribute a commercial product, eg. an embedded system (you can still do a lot of this with GPL but you need to release your changes)
• BSD is UNIX, Linux is Linux. The famous line is "BSD is what you get when you port UNIX to x86, Linux is what you get when you write a UNIX for x86"
• ZFS is a proper 'enterprise' file system. You can get it on Linux with a kernel module, but it is part of FreeBSD. If you don't know about ZFS I thoroughly recommend you read up on it - very different to what you may be used to with ext2/ext3 (it is between a standard file system and a managed database - like what WinFS was supposed to be).
• POSIX vs GNU - depends which world you come from
• DTrace for kernel and system tracing & troubleshooting. It isn't a single application but rather a framework that can be scripted. If you have ever run iosnoop or execsnoop on OS X then you have used DTrace - these apps are DTrace scripts.
• FreeBSD is an entire operating system as opposed to just a Kernel, meaning any tutorial or reference you find for FreeBSD will work everywhere, while Linux tutorials and tips have to be broken down for CentOS, Ubuntu, SuSE, etc.
• The FreeBSD documentation is excellent. Free books, manuals etc. and because it is an entire operating system it is consistant and you are only learning one thing.
• FreeBSD is a community project rather than a single kernel master and then distributors putting an operating system together. This has pros and cons.
• rc.d bootup vs SysV bootup scripts
• BSD is where a lot of excellent tools come from. for eg. the pf firewall (arguably better than iptables, you can build a very very good load balancer with BSD + pf), openssh, openssl, etc.
• BSD has built in IPSec
• ACL's and MAC's security model. you see this in OS X as well. Linux had user, group, everybody and read, write, execute. ACL + MAC is a whole new level above that (which Linux is adopting anyway)
• BSD has an excellent and stable network stack that has been real-world tested for decades. Windows winsock was a port of the BSD network stack.
• FreeBSD package management and installer are very easy to use
• FreeBSD is 'light' by default, meaning you can start with just a booting system and then build up from there - as opposed to an 8GB linux server install with X, etc.
• FreeBSD ports is a distribution system where applications are installed from source that is compiled at the time. For eg. instead of pkg-add apache2 you go into the apache port and compile it yourself. This means you can pick the exact modules that you want to incorporate and only those you require - not one line of code more. You can also optimize the compile for your architecture, memory setup etc. and a lot of applications have their settings built in on compile rather than from runtime configuration. When you install a package you are often installing the kitchen sink and an app that has been optimized for the lowest common denominator. This used to be a lot more important since CPU, memory and disk space were more expensive, but the solution today is to just get more hardware rather than to optimize. I used to invest days and weeks into getting my FreeBSD systems just perfect - not a single library or binary that isn't used, not a single apache module that isn't required, and tuning every little variable for that machine. This is an art and skill that is being lost when you can replace it with sudo yum install httpd php mysql-server php-mysql and then agreeing to install the 130 packages that are required as dependancies. With ports you need to understand the dependancies and why they are there yourself - a bit more work, but there is a payoff.

It used to be a no-brainer to use FreeBSD for web serving since it had kqueue - a file descriptor poll that would allow the system to open and maintain thousands of connections at the same time (modern web servers were adapted to use kqueue on BSD and were an order of magnitude faster than the Linux equivalents that used select). But now Linux as of 2.6 has epoll which is its version, so those same web servers now have an equivalent on Linux that is as good as kqueue on FreeBSD.

now it is less obvious, but BSD still has a big advantage in load balancing and firewall. you don't have to use FreeBSD for that, there are mini distributions like pfsense, monowall, etc.

I'd love to use FreeBSD for web servers but the virtualization hosts I use don't support it (primarily Amazon, who require you to purchase a Windows EC2 instance to run FreeBSD (long story)).

If you were setting up your own hosting environment consider FreeBSD for the firewall and load balancer, and also to run your private administration machines 'behind' your public network (setup a VPN private network and VPN back to your office/work machine so you don't have to leave public interfaces open to access machines).

If you are interested in learning more about operating system then FreeBSD is worth investigating. Download the 146MB mini ISO:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/9.1/

attach it to a virtualbox virtual machine, start it up and follow along with the handbook:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/

by learning and using FreeBSD you will get to know UNIX better which will teach you a lot more about Linux as well (why there are differences and what they mean). pf, ipsec, dtrace and zfs are worth it on their own.

Solaris is now open source and it includes dtrace and zfs as well. Its a great formerly commercial and 'enterprise' UNIX that is similar to BSD.

(this comment ended up being longer than I thought it would be )

juan

Very well said, but you quoted with the wrong name.

I use fbsd on my homeserver and personal vps which has been extremely stable with 500+ days uptime which is just about 48$ for 6mos.

awson

Sure is hipster in here

fly

@awson said:
Sure is hipster in here

?