VMware [FreeBSD WIKI]

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====== VMware ======

==== ESXi ====
ESXi is bare-metal hypervisor, which supports %%FreeBSD%%.

===== VMware Tools =====
VMware tools is an optional set of drivers and utilities that improves the interaction between the host and the guest, as well as improves performance. There are currently 3 different "flavors" of VMware Tools for %%FreeBSD%%:

=== - Official VMware Tools ===
Official tools by VMware. Easy to install. Just click the "Install VMware Tools" button in the GUI, mount the virtual CDROM, copy the tar.gz file, extract and run the installation. Requires lang/perl and misc/compat6x.

  * With CURRENT (10.x), official tools and memory ballooning can produce kernel panics, mostly noted when there's no load.

=== - Open Virtual Machine Tools ===
GPL licensed tools, also from VMware. Available in ports as [[http://www.freshports.org/emulators/open-vm-tools/|emulators/open-vm-tools]] and [[http://www.freshports.org/emulators/open-vm-tools-nox11/|emulators/open-vm-tools-nox11]]. Installing from ports will also install several dependencies, which is a bit annoying. Contributions to the code base are accepted, but one needs to sign an agreement and send it to VMware. The %%FreeBSD%% ports are also quite outdated.

=== - OpenBSD vmt(4) VMware Tools driver ===
BSD licensed kernel level implementation of VMware Tools. With this driver several features work out of the box without the need for installing any packages/ports. vmt(4) is not available in stock %%FreeBSD%% at the moment, but a non-working %%FreeBSD%% driver [[http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/projects/vmxnet/sys/dev/vmware/vmt/|is available in a projects/ branch]]. It may be a good starting point for porting this driver over to %%FreeBSD%%. If we want working tools out of the box in the future, this is probably the way forward.

==== MacOS Aarch64 Support ====
There is a [[https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/get-download?downloadGroup=FUS-PUBTP-2021H1|VMware Fusion Technology Preview]] available with %%FreeBSD%% support for Apple Silicon (ARM) Macs.

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[[CategoryVirtualization]]