= Latest FreeBSD and Vultr VPS =

Does anybody have experience with Vultr and how quickly they have the latest version of FreeBSD available for new VMs?
Also, are there any issues with running the freebsd-update utility to upgrade the OS?
I am thinking of moving from Digital Ocean to Vultr and would to hear other peoples experience in regard to the above

I've been running FreeBSD on Vultr for years (probably since around FreeBSD 9 or 10). Been smooth sailing with no problems

I don't remember how long they usually take to update to the latest version. But with FreeBSD it's really easy to just install whatever version they do supply and upgrade it, just takes a few minutes. OR you can upload the latest FreeBSD ISO and install it as Vultr allows custom ISOs. You don't need to wait for them to supply a pre-built image

There have been no issues with freebsd-update on Vultr across a couple of major version bumps and several minor ones. It works just the same as it does on physical machines

Edit: I just checked and Vultr has the latest version of the 13.x and 12.x branch at the moment, so you'd be starting entirely up to date. Not sure how long after release before they have 13.1, but it's super easy to upgrade from 13.0 to 13.1 if you want

FreeBSD runs great on Vultr. I manage dozens of instances there for various clients. Do be aware of this issue, though, if you want to do your own install. Although this may be fixed by now, the workaround is to first install your instance from Vultr's image (this is so they set up the correct VM profile). Then attach your install ISO and install over it

I've done quite a bit of testing and have submitted a bug report. The loading of the virtio_random kernel module hangs on booting -- they've fixed the hang on shutdown issues. The hang on boot only happens if you have a single vCPU and (as you pointed out) have not already installed with one of their images

For the average user accepting the vultr standard image this will not be an issue but in my case I wanted to quickly deploy using the FreeBSD pre-built VM images and these always hang on boot

Also booting a standard FreeBSD CD/DVD will fail in the same way if you have not already installed from a vultr image

I've documented a couple of workarounds in my bug submission


It is not actually clear in my reading if this is completely FreeBSD's fault. There may be issues in the QEMU Q35 virtual machine but I'm hopeful the FreeBSD folks can work around whatever issue this newer VM version has caused

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