Good afternoon!
I am coming to you live from Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and FreeBSD 9 (amd64). I am not a L*inux engineer but I do enjoy working with BSD/UNIX.
Why would you want to run FreeBSD within Hyper-V? Because it makes engineers question their place in life, brings great debates, and challenges network architects.
I am not here to debate VMware vs. Microsoft when it comes to virtualization technologies. Each company has their product and it is up to you to determine which product you would like to standardize on.
There is not anything super complicated getting a FreeBSD 9.0 machine up and “running” within a Hyper-V cluster. There are many things to be tested but the basics are there. From what I have tested here any further changes to the installation allowing FreeBSD to boot is not necessary. Networking IPv4 and IPV6 works as expected and zero errors are found during the IDE access.
Remember to test all scenarios if you are going to be running this in production.
To begin our exercise we must obtain the following:
- Approval from your change management board to install FreeBSD on a Hyper-V cluster (kidding!) You are working in a LAB RIGHT?
- FreeBSD 9.0 (amd64) bits
- Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V Roles/Features
Image 1
Create your VM Guest
Image 2
Assign 2048 MB of memory and check “Use Dynamic Memory for this virtual machine”
Image 3
You will add the “Legacy networking adapter” later
Image 4
Start with 30GB disk size – it’s dynamically expandable and you may want to mount other disks for /var and /tmp. I AM assuming you are familiar with FreeBSD slices here.
Image 5
Point your guest installation to the FreeBSD 9 (amd64) bits.
Image 6
Remove the Network Adapter and add the “Legacy networking adapter”
Image 7
FreeBSD installer showing the attached network interface
Everything from this point forward is default configuration. If you need a reference to the remaining installation of FreeBSD. Please seek assistance from the FreeBSD handbook at www.freebsd.org.
Thanks!
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