FreeBSD containers in production. A NSFW guide.

Yan Ka Chiu

An overview and summarization of running FreeBSD containers on the cloud in production.

Two years ago, I joined a company to design and implement the entire backend stack, in which we eventually chose to use FreeBSD to run a number of our backend services, packaged as containers, alongside other services running on Kubernetes.

This talk will explain the decision’s rationale and summarize the good, the bad, and the ugly of running FreeBSD containers on the cloud. I will also demonstrate the tools we (ab)used to create, orchestrate and distribute these services, evaluate the impact on DevOps and other aspects, and contrast them with the Linux counterparts. Last but not least, we will try to conclude if this is for everyone.