CHARTER
The mission of the Enterprise WG is to bring clarity to feature and other gaps that limit enterprise (e.g. business or end user) adoption of FreeBSD as a general-purpose server platform and provide a supportive group to help developers close these gaps. For our purposes, we are defining general purpose enterprise server as servers used by businesses and other organizations to support business applications and end users. Typical applications include Active Directory, Samba, kerberos, ERP and other apps often written in Java, and increasingly AI workloads and cloud native apps.
The Scope of the WG is: For the remainder of 2023, the WG will focus on the set of features identified initially and refined during the WG’s first meetings. The WG will also concern itself with onboarding a semi-permanent group of developers and users to look after the ongoing utility of FreeBSD for general purpose enterprise server workloads.
Our success metrics are:
The deliverables are:
We operate according to the FreeBSD Code of Conduct
DONE: The Google Group now has 69 members
DONE: See above
DONE
| Feature | Description |
| OCI | Important to have an OCI runtime |
| bhyve manageability | This is a pain in the enterprise. FreeBSD has exceptional jails & hypervisor with a lot of possibilities, but everything has to be done manually |
| AD/DNS Integration | This is needed. In a large environment it is impossible to email the DNS admin about every single change, therefore Active Directory makes heavy use of dynamic DNS updates authenticated via GSS-TSIG (requires Kerberos) |
| NVIDIA GPU support | HPC, AI workloads. Many in these industries like FreeBSD but need more native support in nvidia. security is key for these workloads |
| Java / OpenJDK | No upstream BSD port in OpenJDK |
| Samba 4.x | Since the inception of their new VFS layer, it has become harder for FreeBSD. Too many changes living now in downstream (port). FreeBSD core pillars of ZFS and network capability must be in sync with Samba's features to have great file hosting |
| smbfs 2.0/3.0 | The current smbfs driver is 1.0, totally unusable |
| Kerberos | Heimdal base is old. Splitting of MIT Kerberos port into client and server would be ideal |
| eBPF | eBPF page |
DONE
| Feature | Mean rank (lower is more important) | Mean difficulty (higher is harder) |
| OCI | 2.9 | 4.1 |
| bhyve manageability | 3.3 | 2.3 |
| AD/DNS Integration | 3.7 | 3.3 |
| NVIDIA GPU support | 4.0 | 3.9 |
| Java / OpenJDK | 4.6 | 3.4 |
| Samba 4.x | 4.8 | 3.4 |
| smbfs 2.0/3.0 | 5.0 | 4.0 |
| Kerberos | 5.1 | 3.5 |
| eBPF | 5.8 | 4.6 |
IN PROCESS. See Workstreams below
PLANNED, NOT STARTED
This group is open to anyone who would like to contribute in support of its charter. We are currently using Google Groups to communicate.
Please complete this form to register your interest. Enterprise WG Interest Form
We need all kinds of perspectives and expertise - developers, end users, project managers, testers. Questions please email greg at freebsdfoundation dot org
Our next work group call is not scheduled yet. Please sign up with the work group via the Enterprise WG Interest Form to receive the next meeting link.
The agenda for the next call: