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DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

digitalocean.com

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Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#51
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, Sam here from the DO Product team. You're right, we dropped the ball on UserVoice. There aren't any excuses to be made. I know it's a lot to ask, but please trust that going forward we will be much more transparent through UserVoice & elsewhere. We'll also be much more intentional in communicating our priorities through that medium, as this seems to be at the root of the concern about missing deadlines. Ag…

You are what you do. I'm a DO customer, and while you've never let me down, I'll be paying attention now that you've given your word.

Challenge accepted :).

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#52
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a bunch of stuff that was "planned" for Q1 2014 (separate hardware for master/slave setups) that aren't even close to shipping. Pretty frustrating. I like Digital Ocean and I use them in production for some apps but it's very hard to take their techops team seriously when they are missing deadlines by 12-18 months or more without regular updates. It's pretty unprofessional.

Yep. I was running Arch Linux on a personal droplet, and they decided to deprecate support for it. I don't even think there was an official announcement about it. There's even quite a bit of backing to bring it back [1], and oddly, they use an old video on their front page with when Arch was still listed [2]. "Built for developers" => can't use developer's favorite OS. :( [1]: https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forum…

Because Arch is what % of the userbase and how much does it cost to support that userbase? It gets kind of old hearing people whine about this. If you really want Arch there are providers that support it.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#53

Should have gone with OpenBSD instead to be honest. Half the requests on your UserVoice are for OpenBSD. All the coolest stuff in FreeBSD comes from OpenBSD. OpenBSD -- the world's simplest and most secure Unix-like OS. Creator of the world's most used SSH implementation OpenSSH, the world's most elegant firewall PF, the world's most elegant mail server OpenSMTPD, the OpenSSL rewrite LibreSSL, and the NTP rewrite Ope…

For security probably. But security isn't the only reason that I choose an OS. OpenBSD's security comes at a cost. They are usually late to the party on non-security features. Many of the security features make OpenBSD much slower. Even for security software OpenBSD isn't as big a win as the devs make it out to be. Take for instance PF, OpenBSD developers will be quick to point out that the OpenBSD version is more up to date. But that doesn't tell the whole story, FreeBSD is using a fork which allows for multi-threaded execution which is a must most non-trivial deployment scenarios. Further more OpenBSD often takes to hard of a line on security enhancements with the belief that the kernel should be the line in the sand. Usually, one prefers multiple layers of security but OpenBSD says the kernel is often good enough. See OpenBSD's refusal to add a MAC framework for an example of this. Jails also don't exist for similar reasons, though they are useful for reasons other than security.

The source you have for the 'testbed' for new technologies makes the claim but barely has warrant for it. On the other hand, OpenBSD is much more liberal about breaking compatibility especially when it involves security. While I'm not going to excuse OpenSSL, NTP, or Sendmail they are all general robust software that has been in use for decades. Aside from LibreSSL the OpenBSD rewrites have been incompatible.

FreeBSD also offers a number of incredibly compelling features outside of what OpenBSD can, or will offer in the short to medium term. I'll just list them: virtualization with Bhyve, boot from zfs, a linux compatibility layer, a much more modern package manager, official java support, the ability to install binary blobs.

None of this is to say that OpenBSD isn't a great choice, but recognize there are reasons to choose both platforms and that one doesn't need to spread FUD to advocate for their favorite platform.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on demand, adding other BSD variants is certainly a possibility. We had to start somewhere, and the FreeBSD community has been very vocal about wanting to see this happen. This is the first non-Linux OS we've decided to support, so we're excited to get feedback on it.

Thanks! I'm a long time FreeBSD vps user. It'd be great to check if DO droplets can support CARP failover within the same datacentre, and then expand to be able to do this across datacentres. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/carp.html My use cases so far haven't involved CARP but I'd like to start experimenting with that!

Any recommendations of other BSD VPS providers?

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#56
Just deployed a FreeBSD droplet and I'm not sure if it's just because the host network is busier than my other droplets, but I seem to be getting about half the network performance that I can in a default linux droplet. They are using Virtio, which is good since it doesn't require hardware emulation like the E1XXX devices on KVM. I should probably use a better test than cachefly but just wondering if theres any known tweaks/tips that should be done for FBSD on KVM with virtio devices.

Disk performance is also lacking in comparison to the ubuntu droplet as shown in the pastebin. Could just be because everyone's spinning up fbsd boxes on this host? :)

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=E8Q06XgM

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#57
post #55

In case someone missed it: The header graphic in this article is a great homage to Beastie, the (original?) FreeBSD mascot, analogous to the Tux Linux penguin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon

[deleted]

Hmm. I still see it on their website: https://www.freebsd.org/art.html

Or am I missing something else ?

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#58
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dtrace alone will turn you from a developer to a Developer + Systems admin + practical OS engineer, you will understand how your stack is performing within various lower levels of the operating system and be able to tune the hell out of your stack from bottom up.

Come on, 0.1% of the people need Dtrace...

Everyone needs to know all of the things. Just because it's a pain to get now doesn't mean people wouldn't use it if it were there. Remember when monitor mode meant patching drivers and running a weirdo kernel? It's like that.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#59
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could connect all of your VMs to it via ipsec or openvpn and have your own little private network.

Unfortunately, you can't. IPSEC isn't enabled by default in the FreeBSD kernel.

You can build a customized kernel.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#60
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could connect all of your VMs to it via ipsec or openvpn and have your own little private network.

Unfortunately, you can't. IPSEC isn't enabled by default in the FreeBSD kernel.

Yes, but you can use custom kernels with FreeBSD on DO. In the comments:

"FreeBSD droplets do allow you to customize your kernel. Unlike other droplets these boot from the kernel within their filesystem. This is the reason that FreeBSD is not available in NYC1, NYC2, and AMS1 as these regions do not yet support this option."

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