running FreeBSD under VMware
Although FreeBSD runs under VMware and there’s even an option for it in the GUI management tool, it doesn’t run perfectly.
timekeeping
The first problem with FreeBSD under VMware is time synchronisation. After running FreeBSD for a few minutes you’ll notice that its timer is completely out of sync comparing with the host’s timer. This is mainly due to the nature of virtualization provided by VMware connected with FreeBSD’s kernel tick value.
By default the kernel ticks every 1/1000 second which is too frequently for VMware based virtualized environment. The number of ticks per second can be adjusted either by adding HZ=100 to your kernel config file and recompiling it or by adding kern.hz=100 to /boot/loader.conf and rebooting your server.
100 is just a suggested value (it actually used to be the default value in older versions of FreeBSD) but something smaller than that, like 50 or 20, might work better for you.
on top of these changes you should also run ntpd!
network performance
Network performance can be tuned a bit by using a different ethernet card emulation in your VMware. So instead of using a driver for an AMD card, change it to the em driver for Intel cards. This requires editing the .vmx file describing your virtual server and adding:
You have to restart your virtual server for these changes to take place.