bhyve (pronounced "bee hive", formerly written as BHyVe for "BSD hypervisor") is a type-2

hypervisor A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

initially written for

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

. It can also be used on a number of

illumos Illumos (stylized as illumos) is a partly free and open-source Unix operating system. It is based on OpenSolaris, which was based on System V Release 4 (SVR4) and the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Illumos comprises a kernel, device d ...

based distributions including

SmartOS SmartOS is a free and open-source SVR4 hypervisor based on the UNIX operating system that combines OpenSolaris technology with Linux's KVM virtualization. Its core kernel contributed to the illumos project. It features several technologies: C ...

OpenIndiana OpenIndiana is a free and open-source Illumos#Current_distributions, illumos distribution Unix-derived UNIX_System_V, System V SVR4 operating system, started as OpenSolaris continuation project. fork (software development), Forked from OpenSolar ...

, and OmniOS. A port of bhyve to

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

called xhyve is also available.

Features

bhyve supports the virtualization of several guest operating systems, including FreeBSD 9+,

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project e ...

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is ava ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

DragonFly A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat thre ...

and

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

(

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and later,

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on F ...

and later). bhyve also supports

UEFI UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a set of specifications written by the UEFI Forum. They define the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples ...

installations and VirtIO emulated interfaces. Windows virtual machines require VirtIO drivers for a stable operation. Current development efforts aim at widening support for other

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s for the

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging ...

architecture. Support for peripherals relies on basic and VirtIO drivers and supports: eXtensible Host Controller Interface (

xHCI eXtensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) is a computer interface specification that defines a register-level description of a host controller for Universal Serial Bus (USB), which is capable of interfacing with USB 1.x, 2.0, and 3.x compatible ...

) USB controllers, NVM Express (NVMe) controllers, High Definition Audio Controllers, raw framebuffer device attached to VNC server (Video Output), and AHCI/PCI Passthrough. Since the support for peripherals is incomplete, hardware-accelerated graphics is only available using PCI passthrough. But, Intel GVT (and other vGPUs with driver support) should allow sharing the device with the host. bhyve performs about the same as its competitors with lack of memory ballooning and accelerated graphics interface, but bhyve has a more modern codebase and uses less resources. In the case of

the resource management is more efficient.

is also known for its exemplary I/O speeds; running bhyve from

has a lot of advantages for time-critical virtual appliances by reducing I/O time, especially on disk and network related loads.

Applications

Docker on

uses a bhyve derivative called ''HyperKit''. It is derived from ''xhyve'', a port of bhyve to macOS's Hypervisor framework. iohyve on

is a command line utility to create, store, manage, and launch bhyve guests utilizing built in FreeBSD features. vm-bhyve on

is a shell based, minimal dependency bhyve manager. BVCP on

is a lightweight, native, full featured web interface for managing virtual machines.

Other distributions

ClonOS, a

based distribution for virtual hosting platform and appliance, primarily uses bhyve and has a web-based management interface. MyBee, a

based distribution for managing cloud VMs (bhyve) through a simplified API.

, an

Illumos Illumos (stylized as illumos) is a partly free and open-source Unix operating system. It is based on OpenSolaris, which was based on System V Release 4 (SVR4) and the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Illumos comprises a kernel, device d ...

based distribution for managing cloud VMs (bhyve, solaris zones) through a simplified API.

References

External links

*
bhyve
on FreeBSD wiki FreeBSD Free virtualization software Software using the BSD license {{software-stub

Features

Applications

Other distributions

References

Further reading

External links