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FreeBSD Gets Official Support As VMware ESX Guest

Posted by timothy on from the be-their-guest dept.

An anonymous reader writes "FreeBSD 4.9 has become the first non-commercial open-source operating system to be supported as a VMware ESX guest. This allows enterprise users to benefit from a powerful open-source OS with the benefit of subscription free binary updates. This also solves a number of enterprise support issues around lack of hardware vendor support and issues around using non-commercial operating systems on SAN fabrics as the SAN access is abstracted through VMware, which the SAN supplier is more likely to have certified."

3 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How about VMWare host? by Mr.Ned · · Score: 3, Informative

    VMWare ESX server, the subject of this article, is a complete operating system for running multiple virtual machines through VMWare. It's based on a 2.4 version of the Linux kernel.

  2. Re:How about VMWare host? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    VMware ESX uses a Linux 2.4 kernel as a 'console' although this is actually a special virtual machine, that can see the physical hardware for monitoring and managment. All the virtual machines,including the console, run on top of VMwares own (non-linux, non-gpl)microkernel. This is completly diferent to the Workstation and GSX products.

  3. Requiem for the FUD by AgainstFUD · · Score: 4, Informative
    ... facts are facts. ;)

    FreeBSD:
    FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
    "FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
    Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
    "[FreeBSD] has a secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
    What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
    "FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

    NetBSD:
    NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
    NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

    OpenBSD:
    OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
    Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

    *BSD in general:
    Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
    "The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
    ..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

    --
    Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.