FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Does it run on AMD?
Not yet. keelOS needs an Intel CPU with VT-x and EPT, and VT-d for passthrough. AMD support is planned but not started.
Does it run on an N100 / N305 mini PC?
These are Intel CPUs with VT-x and VT-d, so they should; we have not tested one yet. See the hardware page for what we have tested and what we expect.
Can I pass a GPU to a VM?
Passing a PCIe device through works (disk controllers, NVMe, network cards). Graphics cards and the Intel integrated GPU are in testing and not supported yet.
How often does a hypervisor upgrade need a full restart with the VMs shut down?
Only when the hypervisor itself changes. It is kept small (about 100 KB) so that this is rare; the release notes say for each release whether it changes the hypervisor. Upgrades of the host system (FreeBSD, drivers, ZFS, the management program) only pause the VMs.
Can I move VMs to another machine?
By hand today: each VM is a ZFS dataset, so zfs send it to the other keelOS host. Moving a VM with one click, and moving it while it runs, are planned.
How do I back up VMs?
Snapshots in the web interface cover a VM's disks, settings and firmware variables. Copy them to another machine with zfs send. Scheduled snapshots and backups to another host are planned.
Why is traffic between two VMs on the same host slower than on KVM?
keelOS's virtio network runs in bhyve's user-space process; KVM's runs in the kernel. Between two VMs on one host keelOS reaches about 7.5 Gbit/s against KVM's 31 Gbit/s: still more than a 1 or 2.5 GbE network, but behind. For a router VM and a NAS VM on one machine, give both an SR-IOV virtual function of the same network card: the card switches the traffic in hardware. A faster virtio network path is being worked on now.
Is there a changelog and a roadmap?
Every release comes with release notes on GitHub Releases. The planned items are the ones marked planned on this site; there is no dated roadmap yet.
How do I hear about the first release?
On the releases repository, choose Watch → Custom → Releases, or subscribe to its feed.