It’s been over a year now since I promised to write about the 9P file system mounts for bHyve virtualization in FreeBSD. Finally, here are my notes on how to set the 9P2000 protocol as a simple and high-performance mounting mechanism for virtual machines.

There is an unexpected quick, easy and satisfying way to create new virtual machines for the bhyve supervisor in FreeBSD with the vm-bhyve utility and special cloud images supplied by many distributors.

Installing urgent system upgrades can be a scary and challenging task, if you have a complex remote production system with only limited console access.

To the rescue, a feature called Boot Environments has been ported from Solaris to FreeBSD. Based on snapshots and writable clones from ZFS, it allows system and package upgrades to be performed in a safe environment, without overriding the working system config (even without going down for the installation process). When problems occur, an old working configuration could be rolled back instantly, or even chosen directly from the FreeBSD boot menu.