Recommended way to run CentOS 7 on a host FreeBSD: VM or jailed environment?

Question

I need to deploy either a CentOS VM or a jailed instance on a FreeBSD server (10.3).

The solutions devised: - run it through VirtualBox (headless) - use bhyve

I thought about a third alternative: using a jailed environment and running CentOS 7 on it, althought I couldn't find any clues if that is feasible. Has anyone implemented this solution succesfully?

Answer 1

I understand you are looking for a server-side solution, not a desktop one?

You have the following options:

1. Full virtualization
   • Xen: general wiki.
   • VirtualBox, as you mentioned, probably not as great for running on a server as it is for quick setup of dev environments on the desktop.
   • Qemu, very mature, probably not as fast as Xen/Dom0 or bhyve.
2. Hypervisor providing near bare-metal performance
   • Xen with dom0 - has been many years in the making but is beginning to see the light of day: upcoming changes in FreeBSD 11 (Xen source).
   • bhyve - the native FreeBSD Hypervisor. It's not production ready yet, even though many people already use it in production.
3. FreeBSD jail - operating system-level virtualization. It's perfectly capable of running CentOS, however may need a bit of trial and error to do it properly. See: The Midnight Oil, FreeBSD wiki. Also, may not support the latest CentOS version.

If I was to bet I would put my stack on bhyve since its development is progressing quickly and is already very fast. FreeBSD jail may work but it would break more easily with upgrades of either the main host or the CentOS guest (assuming you made it to work in the first place). If you need stability and solution that's production ready then probably Xen or VirtualBox with preference to Xen because of it's upcoming Dom0 feature.