Re: How do you virtualize old hardware?
"Take the case of FreeBSD. Only the most recent versions support VMware's vmx network interface. Previously, you needed the emulated intel NIC. But older versions of FreeBSD didn't even have a driver for that."
Have you actually found that to be a problem? A couple of years ago I ran some tests through a pfSense 2.0 system that had e1000 NICs in it. That would be a pretty old FreeBSD. This was on a ESXi 5.1 three node cluster of Dell PE 610s with Dell PC 62xx switches and quite a lot of other stuff going on.
I got quite close to wirespeed routing for 1 gigabit.
The hypervisor aware drivers are handy, depending on your workload. It allows the HV and VMs to cooperate rather than the HV enforcing.
I do call bollocks on this though: "But older versions of FreeBSD didn't even have a driver for that." How old? em has been around for quite a while ...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
