On Wednesday 21 February 2007 20:50, Martin McCormick wrote: > If one has a FreeBSD system that has 1 gigabyte of RAM > and a 1-GHZ processor, would it be possible to run a couple of > vmware instances of FreeBSD? I want to set up a DHCP server on > each virtual machine and configure one to be optimized for DHCP > failover and dynamic leases while the other is dedicated to > static bootp service. It would be much easier for the 2 > instances of dhcpd to run in separate machines, so to speak, > since they normally use the same named files for logging and > configuration. > > What sort of a performance hit does one usually see on a > virtual machine?
Depends a lot on the virtual machine. VMware Server runs VM's pretty efficiently, but there is a moderate hit. ESX server has almost n performance penalty. > When we run dhcpd on a normal FreeBSD system of the type > described above, the system is normally loaded around 0.05 or so > so it isn't having to work too hard. > > Thanks for any help as to what vmware port is best. The > platform is FreeBSD and the 2 virtual machines will also be > FreeBSD if that makes any difference. Modern versions of VMware don't run under FreeBSD. If you really want VMware then install a supported Linux distro and run VMware server. (Or go out and buy ESX or GSX server or one of the Workstation products). FreeBSD 6.2 works great as a guest under most VMware products. > There will be no X windows involved, just hopefully 2 > DHCP servers running as if they were on two separate boxes. > > Any information to point me in the right direction or > reasons why this is not a good idea are appreciated. For what you're talking about, jails make a lot more sense than virtualization or emulation. If you really want to run virtual machines under FreeBSD, take a look at qemu. qemu (even with the kqemu_kmod port (highly recommended) definitely has a noticeable performance impact, but DHCP is so lightweight that it probably won't matter. JN _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"