OpenBSD 4.1 on ESX Server 3.0.1

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 in UNIX, Virtualization by slowe | 6 comments

Having tested a couple of the previous releases of OpenBSD on various versions of ESX Server (OpenBSD 3.8 here and version 3.9 here), I decided to test OpenBSD 4.1 on ESX Server 3.0.1.  I didn’t really expect any problems at first, but then I stumbled across this article describing a problem between OpenBSD 4.1 and ESX Server 2.5.  Fortunately, it appears as if that problem does not affect ESX Server 3.0.1.

The VM configuration was pretty straightforward; just change the SCSI controller to LSI Logic instead of BusLogic and everything should work beautifully.  The OpenBSD 4.1 release notes indicate a new driver for the VMware VMXnet NIC driver, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test this yet; my installation is still using the pcn0 driver.

After installing OpenBSD, I was able to successfully install a number of packages using pkg_add (pulling the packages down via FTP).  Not confident that I had transferred enough data to be sure that I wasn’t going to see the same issue the other blogger ran into with his installation, I fired up Interarchy and transferred a 450MB ISO file via SFTP.  The file transfer completed successfully and I ran into no problems.

I’ll likely experiment with adding the VMXnet driver within the next few days to see how that works and how it affects network performance.

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  1. Adam’s avatar

    Adam on Monday, September 24, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    how did you create the config file for OpenBSD on ESX 3.01?

  2. slowe’s avatar

    slowe on Monday, September 24, 2007 at 4:34 pm

    Adam,

    Just use the “New Virtual Machine” wizard and select “Other” as the guest operating system. I tested with the LSI Logic SCSI controller, but I don’t know if the BusLogic will work or not. I never did get the VMXnet driver working; instead, I manually modified the .VMX file to use an Intel e1000 card instead.

    You’ll have to jump through some hoops (so I hear–I haven’t actually tried yet) to get VMware Tools running, as there is no native OpenBSD set of VMware Tools.

  3. Terry’s avatar

    Terry on Friday, October 26, 2007 at 11:24 am

    I’m currently trying to get the vmware tools installed on a FreeNAS VM in ESX 3.02 and I’m pulling my hair out.

    Please post if you do find a way to do this. ;)

    Thanks!

  4. Xavier’s avatar

    Xavier on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 9:33 am

    Did you successfully tested the vic driver with OpenBSD 4.1? Is there good reason to switch from pcn to vic?

    Thanks for your feedback!

  5. slowe’s avatar

    slowe on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    Xavier,

    I never was successful in making the vic driver work with ESX Server. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong. One key reason to switch from pcn to vic would be (theoretical) better throughput with lower CPU utilization.

  6. miked’s avatar

    miked on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 12:08 pm

    I have been using OpenBSD 4.1 on ESX 3.0.1 (at a july2007 patch-level) for about 5 months or so, using the LSI controller and the pcn driver. These systems are deployed as carp/pf/pfsync firewalls and I have enjoyed excellent performance. I’m interested in trying the vic driver, but I unless I see performance problems, I’m hesitant to change a very reliable configuration.

    Btw, I have been a casual FreeBSD user for several years, I have been always impressed with how easy and straightforward everything is with Free and OpenBSD. I will probably never buy a Cisco Firewall product ever again. PF is a dream!