geom - help ...

[Ivan Voras]

Rick C. Petty wrote:

> What are data centers using?  I can't imagine they're all doing gmirror and
> gstripe combinations..  gvinum gives you true volume management, e.g. it's
> easier to wipe a mirrored "volume" and make it raid5 or vice-versa.  It is
> useful to have concat + stripe + mirror + raid5 volumes managed together.

Well, in "defence" of g* tools on this particular point, they are 
actually convenience links to "geom" executable. Instead of "gmirror 
label ..." you can just as well use "geom mirror label ..." which is, as 
far as I can tell from vinum's man page, pretty similar to it.

My way of thinking about GEOM classes is that they are (when used 
together) almost the same as one big volume manager (like vinum), only 
split ("refactored") into separate kernel modules and userland libraries.